The Bedlam Detective

by Stephen Gallagher

  Despite the fact that they’d agreed a time for the call, it took almost half an hour for the staff to locate Sir James in his Dundee hotel. Without any preamble, Sir James said, “So what do you make of our mad Sir Owain?”

  “It’s a rum setup,” Sebastian said. “He’s dismissed most of the staff and the estate’s going to ruin.”

  “I could commit him for that alone.”

  “Except that his doctor now claims to be managing his affairs as well as his treatment. They’ve given me the books to look over. But, Sir James, I have to tell you that there have been other developments.”

  “Of what kind?”

  “Two more bodies were found on Sir Owain’s land yesterday.”

  “Bodies?”

  “Definitely murdered this time, no question about it.”

  Sebastian explained further, including mention of Sir Owain’s appearance at the temporary mortuary and his assertion that the victims had been “torn by beasts.”

  “One is the child of a prominent barrister,” he concluded, “so I imagine we’ll get to hear more about it. Sir Owain showed no sign of any guilt, only concern. I made little headway with Grace Eccles, but I’m hoping to track down Evangeline Bancroft. In the meantime I’d like to confirm the credentials of Doctor Ernest Hubert Sibley.”

  “Stay with it,” Sir James said. “It’s no easy matter to take a knight of the realm out of circulation. So let’s hold off calling his doctor a quack until we can back it up with proof.”

  As he left the customs house and crossed the street, Sebastian was startled to hear his name being shouted from nowhere.

  “Mister Becker!”

  He looked all around. Then he looked up. Stephen Reed, the young detective, had opened a second-floor window above the photographer’s studio in order to call to him.

  “Yes?”

  “Have you a moment? Can you come up?”

  The studio was at the top of the house, combining attic space and a large skylight. It was reached by a gloomy staircase through the photographer’s living quarters. His private rooms were screened off by a red velvet curtain with braid and tassels, like the dressing on a Punch and Judy booth. Sebastian ascended through the chemical odors of the photographer’s trade, musty and unnatural, and the boiled-cabbage fragrance of his midday meal, even less appetizing.

  Stephen Reed was waiting at the top of the stairs.

  Sebastian said, “Did you pass on my suspicions to your superiors?”

  “I did,” Stephen Reed said, “and the rebuke was even sharper than I expected. My handling of the search has been roundly criticized and I’ve been demoted to evidence duties.”

  “I’m sorry. I’d hoped you might get a better hearing.”

  “I know. I blame no one. For what it’s worth, I still think that your theory should be investigated before it’s dismissed.”

  “Strictly speaking, Mister Reed, it’s more hypothesis than theory. It’ll be a theory when I can offer some hard facts in support of it.”

  The studio itself was a bright room with a square of heavy carpet on the floor. Potted plants and chairs stood before a canvas drop with a painted seascape on it. Just showing behind the backdrop was a rack of dressing-up clothes that included cloaks and Pierrot costumes.

  “Mister William Phillips,” Stephen Reed said, by way of introduction to the resort’s resident photographer. Billy Phillips was a small man, in a baggy linen jacket with a wing-collared shirt and a bow tie.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t do anything with this,” Billy Phillips said, indicating the object of his frustration with a wave of his hand. Under the skylight stood the photographer’s retouching table. On the table stood the camera from the murder scene. “It’s a Birtac,” he added, as if that explained it.

  “What’s one of those?” Sebastian said.

  “A moving-picture camera,” Stephen Reed said. “Of a kind that’s designed for amateur use, apparently.”

  “It doesn’t expose to plates,” Phillips said. “And plates are all I do. I’m not sure what it uses. For moving pictures there’s almost as many film types as there are devices. All I know is, it’ll be on a long roll and I’ve no way of handling anything of that length. I could try to rig something up in the bathtub, but I can’t guarantee I won’t ruin it. I don’t even want to risk opening the case.”

  Sebastian said, “Where does the camera’s owner send his films?”

  “That’s almost certainly the father. I’m not allowed to speak to him.”

  The photographer said, “There’s a footage counter. See? It’s been run about fifteen feet into the roll.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That something has been captured onto the film.”

  “But we can’t know what it is yet,” Stephen Reed said, and he looked at Sebastian. “Unless you’ve any other ideas, I’ll have to return it to the evidence store.”

  They walked out together with the camera parceled up in brown paper, to disguise it from view. The coroner, a local solicitor, had set a date for an inquest, and members of the national press had been arriving on the morning trains. A journalist and a photographer from the Daily Mirror had made the journey in a two-seater roadster. Hungry for story, they’d need little encouragement to speculation.

  As soon as they were alone, Stephen Reed said, “I didn’t only stop you about the camera. I checked, and there’s a police file on Evangeline and Grace.”

  “Can you get hold of it?”

  “I already have. I called Records last night and it came over this morning. I tell you, I had no idea.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They were not simply lost on the moors for a few hours, as we children were told. They suffered an ordeal, and had no memory of it.”

  “Memory or no memory, Grace Eccles is a damaged and defensive young woman.”

  “I knew Evangeline better.”

  “Well enough to approach her on such a subject?”

  “We’re not children now. I’d hope to engage her in a professional manner.”

  Sebastian said, “Then I’d better set my office to tracking her down.”

  “There’s no need for that,” Stephen Reed said. “We can ask at the library.”

  “They have London directories there?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Stephen Reed said. “But Evangeline’s mother is the librarian.”

  FIFTEEN

  Sebastian waited outside.It seemed wiser. Although Lydia Bancroft hadn’t shown him any actual hostility, he’d given her good reason to be cool toward him. How was he to have known that the subject of his insensitive inquiry-as she must have seen it-was actually the librarian’s own grown-up daughter?

  He stood at the bottom of the street, looking out across the harbor. There wasn’t much to the harbor itself; a sea wall, some fishermen’s huts, a low tidal jetty with its pilings hung with weed. The sea was a way out, the sound of its rollers like a distant train. Where the river estuary spilled across the sand, the masts of beached sailboats pointed this way and that.

  After only a few minutes, he heard the faint sound of a latch and the opening of a door. He turned and looked back up the street, expecting to see Stephen Reed emerging from the library. Instead he saw a young woman in a short-waisted coat and a full traveling skirt. Her hair was up, with a hat pinned in place. She looked back as she emerged; Stephen Reed was right behind her, a small traveling bag in his hand, drawing the library door closed after them. As he stepped out to join the young woman, Stephen Reed gestured down the street, in Sebastian’s direction. She looked his way and seemed suddenly confused. As they moved toward Sebastian, Stephen Reed was explaining something.

  Sebastian did not need an introduction to tell him the young woman’s name. With her hair pinned up, the resemblance to her mother was unmistakable.

  Sebastian straightened up and made an effort to look pleasant.

  “Mister Becker,” Stephen Reed said. “This is Evangeline Bancroft.”
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br />   Sebastian briefly took her hand and felt almost as much at a loss as the young woman looked.

  “Evangeline heard the news and came up on the morning train,” Stephen Reed explained.

  “Heard it how?” Sebastian said. “I thought it hadn’t reached the papers yet.”

  “The murder of a barrister’s child,” the young woman said. “It’s all over the Inns of Court.”

  “You work in the Inns of Court? Are you in the legal profession, Miss Bancroft?”

  “I carry out clerical work for lawyers,” she said, and looked from one man to the other. “Forgive me. There seems to be something I don’t understand here. Are you also a policeman, Mister Becker?”

  “A servant of the Crown,” Sebastian said, “with an interest in this case. I’d intended to seek you out in London, but instead I find you here. You came because you see a parallel with your own history. Am I right?”

  “It’s a shocking crime, Mister Becker,” she protested.

  “I know,” he said. “And I know your own experience had a happier outcome. But there may be something we can learn from whatever you may remember.”

  Evangeline looked unsettled and uncertain. Then she looked back toward the library, as if half inclined to retreat to it.

  “A happier outcome,” she said, and there was no color at all in her tone.

  Stephen Reed spoke then.

  “Please, Evangeline,” he said. “Trust us.”

  “Walk me to my mother’s house,” she said.

  They followed the shore road away from the harbor, overlooking the dunes and the empty beach beyond them. In the dunes stood posts where cork life preservers hung on weathered boards. The cork in the rings was old and splitting, but appeared to have been freshly painted for the season.

  Stephen Reed continued to carry Evangeline’s weekend bag. Sebastian held back and let him do the talking.

  “Evangeline,” Stephen Reed began, “forgive me. But for a moment I have to be a professional man and not your childhood friend. This may cause you some personal distress. But strictly in that professional capacity, I’ve had sight of the case notes from the time that you and Grace Eccles went missing. They tell a different story from the one in the newspapers. I wish I could spare your blushes, but there it is.”

  “I’m not blushing,” she said, though she was. And so, for that matter, was he.

  “This is very awkward,” he said. “If you want me to stop, I will.”

  “No,” Evangeline said, betraying that she was aware of Sebastian without quite looking at him. He felt that his presence was that of part intruder, part chaperone. “Forget my embarrassment,” she said. “This is important.”

  “We need to know what you remember of that night.”

  The road made a steep and sandy turn and they began to climb away from the beach, toward a part of town where modest houses competed for hillside space.

  Evangeline said, “That’s very easy to answer. I remember nothing.”

  Stephen Reed said, “The doctor’s notes are in the file. Please be assured, I didn’t look at the medical details. But when he asked the two of you to explain what happened, he wrote that he saw a look pass between you. Evangeline, if there’s something you know that you have never spoken of, I urge you to tell it to us now.”

  “With all honesty,” she said, “I have no memory of anything that took place. Or even of the exchange of looks that he describes. I can’t imagine what it may have meant. If it happened at all. Stephen, I’m concealing nothing from you. I’ve written to Grace several times over the years. She wrote back to me only once, to tell me that she’d taken over her father’s business and to ask if I’d send her notices for London horse traders’ sales. I imagine that in the usual run of things, we’d be strangers by now. I’ve done my best to keep our association alive, even though we’ve only the past in common.”

  “Then why persist?”

  “Because I think Grace remembers more than I do. I’m sure of it. I’ve been hoping that one day I can persuade her to share what she knows.”

  “Mister Becker’s been out to speak to her,” Stephen Reed said.

  “I had to dodge a rock for my trouble,” Sebastian said.

  Though she’d been serious to the point of a frown until this point, this news transformed the young woman’s expression. Her face lit up, and she let out a laugh that she quickly tried to cover with an apology.

  “Grace is a tricky one,” Evangeline said. “She always has been.”

  “Perhaps you can talk to her,” Stephen Reed said.

  “I will.” She stopped and took the weekend bag from his hand.

  “I’ll walk on from here,” she said. “I’d like some time to think.”

  AS THE two men walked away, Sebastian said, “The medical details?”

  “Both girls were violated.”

  Sebastian looked back, but Evangeline was already gone from sight. “Does she know that?”

  “I imagine it won’t have escaped her, Mister Becker, memory or no memory. How does such an act fit in with your picture of Sir Owain’s madness?”

  On the walk up from the beach, they’d passed a board fence that had been set up to hold back the gorse and sand from the road. Its timbers had all but disappeared behind a pasted mass of notices and handbills for pier-end shows, political meetings, temperance rallies, Fry’s chocolate, traveling circuses, and the Judgment of the Lord. They were passing it again now. The freshest, cleanest addition among the posted bills was the notice of the forthcoming inquest, placed within the last hour or two. The paste was still wet.

  Sebastian said, “I don’t have an answer for you. But let me take the machine.”

  “What machine?”

  “The camera, if it won’t be missed for a few hours. I think I may know where to track down someone with the expertise we need.”

  SIXTEEN

  The names of the houses always charmed her. They hadn’t when she’d lived here, but they charmed her whenever she returned. Prospect Place. St Cuthbert’s. Puffin. St Elmo’s. Evangeline was a city dweller now, a grown woman, and these names were her childhood. She wished that she could revisit them with simple pleasure. But between her childhood and the present stood a short passageway of lost time, where there was only uncertainty and pain. Something within her, some natural custodian whose name she did not know, had elected to close the door on that darkness.

  As a result, she remembered nothing of her lowest hour. It was an act of consideration that she had not consciously authorized and did not appreciate. In speaking of the doctor, Stephen Reed had avoided mention of any results of the doctor’s examination. Perhaps the doctor had been discreet in his notes. For that, at least, she could be grateful.

  As she climbed the last few yards, the sun broke out for a moment. She remembered the summers here. They were endless. And summer society was always strictly divided according to class, position, and propriety. A widow and a widow’s child had never quite fitted in. Which had brought freedom, of a kind. Her friendship with Grace Eccles would have been impossible otherwise.

  Here was her mother’s house. Right up at the back of town with steps up to the front door, a view mostly of rooftops, and a side garden that was just about big enough to put a shed on. The brickwork was neat and the paintwork was green. Lydia paid a man to keep it spruced, every other year. The front door was a heavy showpiece with two panels of etched glass like a funeral parlor or a public house, and was rarely used. Evangeline let herself through the side gate and entered through the kitchen door, which, as ever, was unlocked.

  Lydia Bancroft’s supper place was laid on the table, ready for her return. Supper for one. The house was silent, and Evangeline felt like an intruder.

  But when she took her weekend bag up to her old room, she was surprised to find the bed already made up, and with fresh-smelling linen. She’d given her mother no warning of this visit, so Evangeline could only conclude that this was how she always kept it.

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sp; She laid out her nightdress on the bed, but otherwise she didn’t unpack. She went downstairs and out to the garden shed, which was no more secure than the house; its door didn’t even have a lock, but a small toggle of wood that turned on the frame to hold it.

  From out of the shed, she wheeled her bicycle.

  She hadn’t ridden it in two years, but her mother made occasional use of it, so its condition was good. The tires were soft but the chain ran freely, and a drop of oil and a minute’s work with the air pump had it ready for the road. She never rode in London, but back when she’d lived here she’d cycled everywhere. Evangeline was even adept at cycling in a skirt. Being neither rich nor eccentric, she owned none of the “rational cycling wear” that tended to draw ridicule onto women in public places.

  When she set off down the hill, she wobbled a little at first; but within a minute she had the hang of it again and was soon sailing along.

  If her mother had been surprised to have her turn up unannounced, imagine how Grace would feel.

  On hearing where Sebastian wanted to go, Sir Owain’s driver said, “But that’s thirty miles from here!”

  “Twenty-five,” Sebastian said. “I just measured it on the map.”

  “I have other duties than this,” the driver protested, but Sebastian was firm.

  “As I recall it, the offer of the car was for anywhere I may wish to go.”

  The driver conceded, but did nothing to disguise his displeasure. He went to get behind the wheel, and this time Sebastian had to open the passenger door for himself.

  Once inside, Sebastian set the camera down on the seat beside him. The car had been fully cleaned up now, and the broken window given a running repair with a sheet of thick parchment. It was opaque, but it let in some light while keeping the wind out.

  These were country lanes, but a good part of the route would be along the Bristol road. When they’d left Arnmouth behind, he slid open the window that divided the passenger cab from the driver’s position.

  Leaning forward and raising his voice almost to a shout to be heard, he said, “I fear we got off on the wrong foot, you and I.”