by Emily Organ
Eliza laughed. “And I suppose there is a risk he might fall off the small wooden ladder they use for retrieving books from the highest shelves.”
“Yes, there’s that as well.”
“If I had to choose between that and getting shot at, I know what I would plump for,” said Eliza. “Anyway, I must say I’m looking forward to hearing what Mr Glenville is like. Dorothea Heale has told me so many terrible things about him.”
“Has Dorothea ever met him?” I asked.
“I can’t say that I know.”
“Because if she did, and she gave him the chance to explain how he runs his factories, I think she would understand him a little better. He’s not as bad as people say. In fact, I rather like him.”
Eliza stopped pushing her bicycle and stared at me. “Penelope! Really?”
“Really.”
“But the man is so horrible to his workers!”
“Do you know that for certain?”
“Yes! Dorothea wrote all about it. You’ve read her articles, haven’t you? Do you think she has made it all up?”
“No, not all of it. But perhaps there has been some misunderstanding along the way.”
“What nonsense, Penelope. This isn’t like you at all. I believe he’s hoodwinked you. I hear he’s quite handsome if you can overlook the scar on his face.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?” I retorted.
Eliza seemed startled by my angry response. “It wasn’t supposed to mean anything. I think we should go and have some tea and cake without further ado.”
Chapter 41
Sophia Glenville was dead. Maisie Brown was dead. And so was Betsy Wiggins, who had once worked in the Glenville household. Perhaps it was a coincidence. But with all three deaths occurring within the space of five weeks, I felt sure there had to be a connection.
I sat at my writing desk in my room and thought back to the grey, rainy morning when I had stood outside Elizabeth Wiggins’ home and spoken to her grieving brother. The man who transpired to have been Sophia Glenville’s lover. I leafed through the papers in front of me and found my report on the coroner’s inquest into Elizabeth’s death. There was something which hadn’t seemed right back then, and it still bothered me now. I reread the deposition of one of Betsy’s neighbours:
The Coroner heard that, after a night of drinking, Mr Wiggins had returned to the home he shared with his wife in Gonsalva Road, and an argument had immediately ensued. Their neighbour, Mrs Violet O’Donnell, told the coroner that she had heard shouts late in the evening at approximately 11 o’clock.
Coroner: Were you accustomed to hearing shouting of this manner between Mr and Mrs Wiggins?
Mrs O’Donnell: Until that evening I never heard a cross word between them.
Coroner: To your knowledge, was Mr Wiggins a drinker?
Mrs O’Donnell: Not to my knowledge. He may have been, sir, but I never heard a racket like that before.
Mrs O’Donnell’s statement suggested to me that Mr Wiggins’ behaviour on the night he had murdered his wife was somewhat out of character. Perhaps I was clutching at straws, but it seemed to me that the nature of Betsy’s death needed to be investigated.
I had visited James in his drab, smoky office in Scotland Yard once before. Today I approached his desk as police officers strode in and out of the room with their piles of books and papers.
Writing furiously at a nearby desk was Chief Inspector Cullen, who had silver-rimmed spectacles, a thick grey moustache and a bulbous nose.
“Penny!” said James as I approached him. “This is a surprise!”
He got up from his chair and I noticed that Cullen gave me a cursory glance.
“What brings you here?” asked James.
“Do you have some time today to visit Battersea again?” I asked.
“Well, I suppose I could make time.” He consulted the diary which lay on his desk.
“It’s regarding the Sophia Glenville case,” I said. “And Maisie Brown and Elizabeth Wiggins, for that matter. I wonder if we can find something to connect their deaths.”
“An interesting thought, Penny.”
Cullen put down his pen and glared at me. “This ink slinger fancies herself as a detective again, does she?”
I fought the urge to respond rudely.
“There was something about Elizabeth’s inquest which doesn’t seem quite right to me,” I continued.
Cullen sighed, shook his head and resumed his writing.
I gave James my news report on the inquest. He read through it quickly.
“What doesn’t seem right about it?”
“It’s what the neighbour says. She says Mr Wiggins’ drunkenness was out of character. Don’t you think that’s rather strange?”
“I don’t suppose there’s any harm in speaking to her about it,” said James. “Given that two of Betsy’s friends have died since then, there’s a possibility that foul play may have been involved. I can’t say L Division will like me interfering, though. They have already concluded their investigations.”
“Do they need to know?”
“Probably not.” He smiled, then retrieved his bowler hat and coat from the cloak stand.
“I won’t be long, sir!” he said to Cullen.
The senior detective scowled in reply.
“Cullen really doesn’t like me, does he?” I muttered to James as we left the building.
“Oh, I think he does really. He just doesn’t like to show it.”
I laughed. “You talk nonsense sometimes, James.”
We hailed a cab on Whitehall, which took us alongside the river and over Vauxhall Bridge. The warehouses and smoking chimney stacks of south London loomed ever closer.
“Well, look at that,” said James. “Blundell’s vinegar factory.”
The enormous red-brick building had tall chimneys and a high wall around it. In giant letters supported by iron brackets on the roof were the words ‘Blundell & Co’.
“And I suppose Ralph Lombard’s place is also around here,” I said.
“Just there,” said James, pointing to a dirty cream building with lettering that read ‘Lombard’s Dry Gin’ along the side.
The traffic on Wandsworth Road was slow-moving, and our cabman began hollering at the driver of a horse tram.
“So are you enjoying your freedom again, Penny?” asked James.
“I certainly am. The next time Conway and Sherman consider asking me to work as a maid, you’ll stop them, won’t you?”
“Of course.” He smiled. “Although it was rather fortuitous that you were there when these unfortunate deaths occurred. It meant you were able to help me greatly.”
“I wouldn’t speak too soon,” I replied. “The cases aren’t solved yet.”
“True.”
I held his gaze and felt my face redden slightly. The small confines of a hansom cab placed us in close proximity to one another.
“I expect your Mr Edwards has been pleased to see you again,” he said.
“My Mr Edwards?” I replied scornfully. “I have no possession of him whatsoever. He’s merely a reading room clerk I happen to know.”
“Of course.” James smiled again. “Although I think if he could hear how you have just described him he would be sorely disappointed.”
“Well, I suppose it is inevitable that I shall disappoint him.”
“Really?”
“I’m not looking for a husband, James. You know that. A husband would never tolerate my profession.”
“I suppose it depends on the husband.”
“No, it doesn’t. Husbands don’t expect their wives to work; in fact, many don’t even permit their wives to work. That’s the case for my sister, Eliza. She’s given up trying to pursue a profession because George won’t allow it.”
“George sounds rather old-fashioned.”
“Will you allow the future Mrs Blakely to have a profession?” I asked.
James opened and closed his mouth, as if unsure how
to answer.
“She doesn’t have a profession now,” he replied. “She was a governess for a short while, but she cares for her mother now.”
“What’s the matter with her mother?”
“Between you and me, there’s nothing the matter with her mother. But according to Charlotte, her mother suffers with nerves.”
“Perhaps caused by the prospect of you marrying her daughter.” I laughed.
“That’s quite enough, Miss Green,” chuckled James. “I think we had better get back to the matter in hand, which is a possible connection between the three deaths. Does this mean that you don’t believe Maisie’s death was a suicide?”
“No. I feel sure that someone else was responsible,” I said. “I think that when I saw Maisie’s door close for the first time someone else was in the room with her. That’s why he or she didn’t open the door when I knocked. And after I heard that horrible thud, I heard footsteps. That can only mean that someone else was around.”
“The footsteps came from where?”
“The staircase, I think.”
“Ascending or descending?”
“I can’t be sure. It was only for a brief moment.”
“I’m inclined to agree with you. Maisie didn’t seem right when we interviewed her, did she? I said at the time that the girl was frightened of someone.”
“That bottle of laudanum which was on her dressing table,” I said. “The only other person I’ve seen with laudanum is Lady Wyndham. And it probably has nothing to do with anything, but I saw Lady Wyndham give something to Maisie at the dinner on the night of Miss Sophia’s death. Maisie put it in her apron pocket, but I didn’t see what it was.”
“I need to speak to the Wyndhams again,” said James. “We didn’t get much from Lady Wyndham, did we? She very conveniently became too distressed to continue our interview.”
We arrived at Gonsalva Road, where the trains rumbled behind rows of cramped brick houses. A pall of black smoke drifted across the rooftops.
The cab left us outside number sixteen, where Elizabeth and her husband had lived. A group of dirty-faced children paused from their game to stare at us.
“We need to find Mrs O’Donnell,” I said to James. “She was the neighbour who spoke to the coroner at Elizabeth’s inquest.”
“We need to be careful, though,” said James. “Bear in mind that L Division have already investigated this murder and are convinced that they have their man. We don’t want to upset them.”
“But what if they haven’t investigated properly?” I asked. “If they’ve missed something important they should be grateful for our help, not upset by it!”
“In theory, it should work that way, but in practice it doesn’t,” said James with a grimace.
After calling at a few doors, we found Mrs O’Donnell talking with a friend further down the street. I recognised her from the inquest. She was a tiny lady with a firm jaw and piercing green eyes.
“Mrs O’Donnell?”
“Who’s askin’?” She placed her hands on her hips.
“My name’s Penny Green. I’m a news reporter for the Morning Express. And this is Inspector James Blakely of Scotland Yard.”
Mrs O’Donnell groaned. “Not more of yer! I thought we was rid of ’em! It’s Elizabeth you wants to talk about, ain’t it?”
“Betsy. I knew her as Betsy. She worked as a maid for the Glenville family, didn’t she?”
Mrs O’Donnell raised an eyebrow, intrigued by my knowledge. “Yeah, what of it?”
She removed her hands from her hips, but firmly folded her arms.
“I know the Glenvilles extremely well and their daughter Miss Sophia was terribly saddened by Elizabeth’s death.”
“I’ve ’eard she’s dead an’ all.”
“Sadly, she is. And another maid, Maisie, has since died.”
“Another one?”
“We’re trying to understand why each of them died. I reported on the coroner’s inquest into Elizabeth’s death. And you gave a deposition, didn’t you?”
“I spoke at it, yeah.”
“I may have interpreted this wrongly, Mrs O’Donnell, so do please correct me. But the implications from your deposition —”
“Yer what? You uses a lotta long words.”
“What I mean to say is that you told the inquest Mr Wiggins didn’t usually come home drunk and harm his wife?”
“Never ’eard ’im do it afore that time.”
“So you had never heard him lose his temper before?”
“‘E may ’ave done, but I ain’t never ’eard it.”
“And you mentioned at the inquest that he wasn’t much of a drinker.”
“I ain’t never seen ’im drunk afore then, neither.”
“So he had a sudden change of mood and drank heavily, then came home and murdered his wife?” asked James.
“Yeah, it was sudden, like. I dunno what ’appened that day in the fact’ry, but ’e’d drank a skinful and took it out on ’er. P’raps ’e couldn’t take ’is drink. Some men can’t when they ain’t used ter drinkin’ a lot. Then they drinks and they loses their mind. S’pose ’e regrets it now. What I don’t understand is why they never asked that other bloke.”
“What other bloke?”
“The bloke what come back wiv ’im from the pub.”
“He brought someone back with him that evening?” I asked.
“He did, yeah.”
James and I exchanged an astonished glance.
“How do you know that?” James asked.
“My Stan saw the pair of ’em walkin’ down the street.”
“Stan is your husband?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Did Stan tell the police what he saw?”
“No one never asked ’im.”
“Did he not wish to volunteer the information?”
“’E don’t like talkin’ to the police if ’e can ’elp it. They always go on and ask ’im abaht summink ’e ain’t done.”
“If I understand you correctly, Mrs O’Donnell, you’re saying that on the night Elizabeth was murdered, your husband saw Mr Wiggins and another man return to the house Elizabeth shared with her husband,” said James.
“Yeah.”
“Did he recognise the man?”
“No, never seen him afore. Proberly someone from the fact’ry.”
“Did your husband see the man leave?”
“Nah, my Stan went dahn the pub. All the ’ollerin’ were over by the time he got back. ’E’d already killed ’er by then.”
“Who? Mr Wiggins or the stranger?” I asked.
“Wiggins! That’s what ’e got ’imself harrested for!”
“And what became of the stranger?”
“’Ow should I know?”
“Could the stranger have killed Elizabeth?”
“Why would ’e do that?”
“I have no idea,” I said. “But is it possible that, amid all the shouting and banging you heard, the stranger could have murdered Elizabeth?”
“There were a lotta shoutin’ an’ bangin’, so I s’pose ’e could of. But ’e weren’t there when the police turned up.”
“No, I don’t suppose he would have been, would he? If he did murder poor Elizabeth, he presumably would have run away as quickly as possible afterwards,” said James.
“Yeah, I reckon ’e would of.”
“And allowed the drunk and insensible Mr Wiggins to take the blame,” I suggested.
“That could of ’appened, yeah.”
“So the stranger might be the murderer?”
“Yeah. But ’e ain’t, though. Wiggins done it. ’E’s the one what got harrested.”
“Which factory did Mr Wiggins work at, Mrs O’Donnell?” asked James.
“Lombard’s.”
“Interesting,” said James. “So before his wife was killed he presumably had a drink or two at a tavern near to the factory.”
“Proberly. I can’t say I know.”
“I’d like to speak to your husband about this man, if you please, Mrs O’Donnell,” said James politely.
“’E ain’t ’ere,” she replied gruffly. “And he don’t like the police.”
“Please reassure him that I have no interest in what he may or may not have done himself. All I wish to do is find out more about the man Mr Wiggins was with that night. When will your husband return home, Mrs O’Donnell?”
“This evenin’.”
“I shall return then.”
“And thank you, Mrs O’Donnell.” I said. “You’ve been extremely helpful.”
Chapter 42
“L Division completely ignored a witness!” fumed James as we walked up Wandsworth Road toward Lombard’s gin distillery.
“I don’t think they even knew about him. I suppose difficulties arise when potential witnesses don’t wish to talk to the police.”
“Of course it’s difficult, but it’s still their job to find these people! It doesn’t sound as though Elizabeth’s death was properly investigated at all. L Division arrested the most obvious assailant and considered their job done.”
We jumped onto a horse tram and climbed its narrow, curving staircase to the roof.
“I’ll return to Gonsalva Road this evening,” said James as we sat down on the wooden bench. “And in the meantime, we need to find out which public house Wiggins was drinking in on the night that his wife was murdered. It’s likely that he was accompanied by the man with whom Mr O’Donnell saw him.”
“Do you think this other man might have deliberately encouraged him to become inebriated?” I asked. “It does not sound as though Mr Wiggins was a regular drinker, but this man may have coerced him.”
“He may have indeed. I will speak to L Division and request a meeting with Wiggins. It may take a little while to persuade them, though. For the time being, we could go to the public houses near Lombard’s and ask if anyone there saw Wiggins that night.”
We got off the tram at Vauxhall Cross and found a number of public houses close to Blundell’s and Lombard’s. From what the landlords had told us, we ascertained that they were popular with the men from the factories as well as the men who worked in the nearby riverside wharves and gas works. And although they had all heard of Mr Wiggins’ arrest for his wife’s murder, we could find no one who could specifically remember seeing him that night.
