by Emily Organ
Curse of the Poppy
A Penny Green Mystery Book 5
Emily Organ
Contents
Curse of the Poppy
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
The End
Historical Note
Thank you
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The Runaway Girl Series
Curse of the Poppy
Emily Organ
Books in the Penny Green Series:
Limelight
The Rookery
The Maid’s Secret
The Inventor
Curse of the Poppy
Chapter 1
The dark spire of All Saints church pierced the summer morning mist as I reached the eastern end of Margaret Street. An inquisitive crowd had gathered outside the townhouse, too busy sharing the news to make way for a carriage which was attempting to pass along the road. The horse shied, parting the mob and frightening the children who were trying to get to their school at the end of the street.
I could see the upper storeys of the narrow, red-brick house. The curtains were drawn across the tall sash windows and the front door was obscured by the crowd.
“Press! Make way!” I called out, hoping this would hasten my progress through the throng. A few people moved, but the majority stayed put. I readied myself with a pencil and notebook in the hope that I might be able to speak to a police officer.
“There ’e is!” came a shout.
“Mr Forster! That’s ’im!” someone else cried out.
“Where?” shouted another.
I pushed forward, keen to catch sight of the man who had been tragically widowed after the events of the previous night. Someone shoved me from behind and my spectacles slid halfway down my nose. I pushed them back into place and tried to remain calm.
A row of police constables kept the crowd at a distance from the house. Beyond them I could see an ashen-faced man in a dark suit and top hat standing beside the door. He had copper-coloured whiskers and his eyes darted nervously across the noisy crowd. He was conversing with a police officer, whose uniform bore the insignia of a chief inspector, and a man wearing a blue-checked suit, who I guessed was a detective.
“Keep yer elbows to yerself!” shouted a woman behind me.
“Where was you dug up?” another retorted.
A fourth man, who appeared to be a friend of Mr Forster’s, joined the group standing outside the house. He was short and round, smartly dressed and wore a top hat and spectacles. The man rested a hand on Mr Forster’s shoulder as a gesture of comfort.
I could hear other reporters in the crowd shouting out questions to the group of men, but nobody responded. It was clear that the police had no wish to speak to the press at that moment.
“Mind yerself, else I’ll roll yer in the mud!” shouted the woman who had complained about the elbows.
“Not afore I punch yer face!” replied the other.
With the crowd growing restless and the police ignoring the reporters gathered, I decided to move to a quieter part of the street and find someone who might be of use to interview.
An anxious-looking lady stood in the doorway of the house next to the church. She wore a dark blue woollen travelling dress and was adjusting her hatpin.
“Excuse me, are you a neighbour of Mr and Mrs Forster?” I asked.
“I am,” she replied solemnly.
A maid carrying a heavy portmanteau stepped out from the doorway behind her and pushed past me as she walked toward a waiting brougham carriage.
“I’m leaving town,” the lady continued. “I cannot bear to stay here while there are violent burglars about.”
“Did you hear anything of the disturbance last night?” I asked.
She glanced at the notebook in my hand. “Are you a reporter?”
“Yes, I’m Miss Penny Green of the Morning Express.”
She paused for a moment, as if considering whether she wished to speak to me. Thankfully, she continued. “I’m Mrs Yarborough. I didn’t hear a thing; that’s what worries me. No one had an inkling of what was happening. No doubt poor Olivia cried out for help and no one came because no one heard her! It was well planned, wasn’t it? The burglars attacked the staff first so they wouldn’t be able to intervene, and then they went for Olivia. I don’t suppose they meant for her to die, but she did! And now poor Mr Forster will never get over it. This street will never be the same again. We’ve lived here happily for almost ten years, but I don’t think I could bear to spend another night under this roof. Who wants to live on a street where someone has been so dreadfully murdered?”
I nodded my head in sympathy as I wrote in my notebook.
“And I hear they made such a terrible mess of the house,” she added. “Completely vandalised, they say. It was such a beautiful home and now everything is ruined! All Mr Forster’s treasures from India… he had so many of them. I should think the valuable ones have all been taken and the less precious ones just smashed to pieces. We had such happy times in their home. Inside it felt as though one had been transported to Bengal with all the beautiful silks draped from ceiling to floor, and a quite delightful fresco of an Indian scene on the wall of the drawing room. Every treasure on display had a story related to it, and Mr Forster did ever so enjoy regaling us with his tales. And we relished hearing them.”
“Had the Forsters been back from India long?”
“I seem to recall that they returned at the end of summer last year. They both missed India, which is why Olivia worked so hard to have the home as beautifully furnished as she did.”
I felt pleased that Mrs Yarborough was being so talkative.
“Mr Forster worked for a large merchant company there, am I right?”
“Yes, I believe so, based in Calcutta
. I forget the name of it now. I heard he made a great fortune out there and brought it back with him, but the thieves have taken full advantage! It’s terrible.”
The maid carried a bulky leather case out of the house.
“Have there been many burglaries in this street?” I asked.
“No, none. It’s been perfectly pleasant living here, and it’s so well placed for shopping. I have friends who wouldn’t dream of living north of Oxford Street, but Mayfair is so overpriced these days because of all the rich foreigners. They pay such ridiculous sums of money for an exclusive address, but that’s not our style at all. Fitzrovia suits us much better. Until last night, that is. The level of violence was quite shocking! Why attack people in that brutal manner? Everyone in that household was utterly defenceless!”
“Perhaps if Mr Forster made his fortune in India the burglars knew which house to target,” I ventured.
“Possibly, or they may have chosen the house entirely by chance. It could have been any one of us, and that, quite frankly, is what I find so frightening. We’ve decided to stay at our home in Somerset.”
“You have no plans to return?”
“Only to arrange the sale of our house. After the events of yesterday evening, who on earth would want to live here?”
The maid joined us with a small dog under her arm, which bared its teeth at me.
“Do please excuse me, Miss Green, but we must go,” said Mrs Yarborough. “I wish to stop thinking about this dreadful unpleasantness, and we have a train to catch at Paddington.”
“Thank you for speaking to me, Mrs Yarborough. Have a safe journey.”
As Mrs Yarborough was helped into her carriage I noticed the crowd had begun to disperse. Mr Forster, his smart, round friend and the two police officers were walking toward me with a group of reporters in tow.
“When did you last see your wife, Mr Forster?” called out a reporter I recognised as Tom Clifford from The Holborn Gazette.
“Leave the man alone,” ordered the chief inspector.
“Where were you when your home was being burgled?” another reporter shouted.
Mr Forster ran a hand across his brow.
“My condolences, sir,” I said as he passed me.
He gave me a startled glance, as if he hadn’t expected to see me standing there. There were dark circles beneath his eyes and his skin looked pallid and clammy. As soon as he caught my eye he quickly looked away again, then muttered something to the detective. To my surprise, the two men began to laugh.
I wanted to ask them what could possibly be amusing on such a misty, dismal morning. Mr Forster’s wife had just been bludgeoned to death by a gang of burglars, yet he was able to laugh quite readily.
I simply couldn’t comprehend it.
Chapter 2
Murder on Margaret Street!
A burglary and brutal murder took place on Tuesday night at a house on Margaret Street, Fitzrovia. The occupier, Mr. Augustus Forster, had left home at seven o’clock for an evening appointment at the East India Club. His wife, Mrs Olivia Forster, had remained in the house and retired to bed at ten o’clock. The housekeeper, Mrs Elizabeth Fereby, was preparing to retire for the evening when she was disturbed by a noise in the kitchen in the basement at just after ten o’clock. Upon investigation, she discovered the kitchen window wide open, and four men armed with cudgels demanding to know the whereabouts of the household’s occupiers. Mrs Fereby refused to tell them, whereupon one of the men struck her on the head and rendered her insensible.
The men climbed the stairs to the first storey and threatened a maid they found there, a Miss Harriet Riddiford, who, in a bid to be rid of the gang, told them the details of some valuable vases that were to be found in the drawing room. She was hit about the arms and chest, and ordered to keep quiet if she wished to preserve her life. Two men went into the drawing room and the other two climbed the stairs to the bedchamber where Mrs Forster slept.
While the content of the exchange between these men and Mrs Forster cannot be known, it is clear that she suffered a blow to the head and died from her injury shortly afterward, while the gang decamped with a stash of valuable jewellery and ornaments. The housekeeper recovered sufficiently from the attack to raise the alarm and constables were soon in attendance, alongside Police Surgeon Dr Sweby and Detective Inspector Bowles of Marylebone Lane police station.
Mr. Forster returned home at eleven o’clock to discover the distressing scene. Mrs Fereby and Miss Riddiford continue to receive treatment at the Middlesex Hospital.
Mr. Forster and his wife had recently returned from Calcutta, Bengal Province, India, where Mr. Forster had worked for the merchant Messrs Lewis Sheridan and Co.
“Well done, Miss Green,” said my editor, Mr Sherman. “You must have spent quite a bit of time at the scene yesterday to get all this detail. And well done on the interview with Mrs Yarborough, too. You’ll notice we’ve published it in its entirety. None of the other papers managed to get an interview with her.”
“It was a bit of luck,” I replied. “I saw her step out of her front door just as she was dashing off to Paddington.”
“You were in just the right place at the right time,” he replied, placing his pipe in his mouth. “That’s the skill of a good news reporter.” His shirt sleeves were rolled up and he wore a blue serge waistcoat. His black hair was oiled and parted to one side. “You haven’t forgotten about the story on the Irish Conference in Boston, though, have you?”
“No, Mr Sherman, I’m working on it now,” I replied.
“I need it on my desk by four o’clock.”
The editor promptly left the newsroom, leaving the door to slam behind him. The newsroom of the Morning Express newspaper was a small, cluttered place with a grimy window looking out over Fleet Street.
“Well done, Miss Green, for being Mr Sherman’s favourite today,” said my colleague, Edgar Fish. He was a tall, broad man with heavy features and a thin, mousey-brown moustache.
“I’d say that Miss Green has been Sherman’s favourite for much of the week,” added the corpulent, curly-haired reporter, Frederick Potter.
“Now you come to mention it, Potter, she has, hasn’t she?” said Edgar. “That won’t do, will it? After all, you and I work a darn sight harder than she does.”
“We do indeed,” added Frederick.
“What I want to know, Miss Green,” said Edgar, “is how you got onto the scene of the Forster murder as quickly as you did. After all, it occurred in Margaret Street and you live in Milton Street, which must be a good three miles away.”
“I have my landlady, Mrs Garnett, to thank for that,” I replied. “She has a friend who is famed for gossip and always seems to hear of these things before anyone else. I had only just sat down to breakfast at the time.”
“Miss Green has an assistant!” said Edgar. “That’s how she does it, Potter!”
“She’s my landlady,” I corrected, “and I think she would object to anyone describing her as an assistant.”
“But she’s a woman,” said Frederick, “and we all know the fairer sex has a predilection for nosiness and gossip.”
“You’ve hit the nail on the head there, Potter,” said Edgar. “Miss Green and her landlady have a natural advantage over us chaps.”
“But aren’t your wives inclined to nosiness and gossip?” I asked.
Both men shook their heads.
“That’s odd,” I replied, “as I’m sure you suggested just a moment ago that these were characteristics all women possessed.”
“Almost all,” replied Edgar. “To tell you the truth, Miss Green, Mrs Fish is really quite distressed about this murder business in Margaret Street. She’s fearful that we might be next!”
“But you don’t have anything worth stealing in your home, Fish,” said Frederick.
“Try telling that to Mrs Fish!” replied Edgar. “She didn’t want me to leave for work this morning, and I’ve been instructed to be home by six o’clock at the very lat
est.”
“That’s a shame,” said Frederick. “It means you won’t be able to have your customary tipple down at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese.”
“I know. Customary tipples are quite out of the question at the moment, Potter. I’m afraid they won’t be permitted until Mrs Fish has found a way to calm herself.”
“Tell Georgina not to worry,” I said. “I’m quite sure the burglars won’t be paying you a visit any time soon.”
“But you can’t be sure of that, Miss Green,” said Edgar. “Your interview with Mrs Yarborough just goes to prove that many people are fearful. No one can bear the thought that it might happen to them. You just don’t know where these villains are likely to strike next.”
“I don’t think this was an opportunistic attack,” I said.
“Is that what the police are saying?” asked Edgar.
“No, not yet. It’s just what I think. It sounds as if the burglary was carefully planned. And I don’t really believe that the motive was burglary at all.”
