by Kerry Tombs
‘Don’t know no Huddlestones. Said her name was Drew. Amelia Drew, that was her name. Then there was Granny,’
‘That must be the old woman Lucy saw,’ said Ravenscroft. ‘Please go on.’
‘Granny Thomson, that were her name. Never said anything, just stayed indoors all day looking after the boy she did.’
‘A boy. How old was this boy?’
‘About seven or eight. Frightened little child he was. I could not help feel sorry for him. They used to treat him terrible they did. Never seemed to give him enough food, or let him out to play with the other children,’ replied the woman sniffing and beginning to move away.
‘Was there anyone else?’ asked Ravenscroft eagerly.
‘There was a daughter. Used to come and visit sometimes, but not very often. Don’t know much about her. Think her name was Polly. That’s all.’
‘Tell me, was there a small child — a baby perhaps?’
‘Yes, a baby. They took the baby with them, when they left. I saw it was wrapped up in a shawl. Crying it was.’
‘Can you tell me the colour of this shawl?’ asked Ravenscroft eager to know more.
‘I don’t know do I? What do you want to know for anyway, they ain’t done nothing has they?’ sniffed the woman again.
‘It is very important, Mrs Bannister,’ emphasized Ravenscroft.
‘Red. It were red.’
‘Thank you. They didn’t happen to say where they were going to, when they left yesterday evening, I suppose?’ asked Ravenscroft.
‘Not a word. They just upped and left, all of them.’
‘Tell me, was there only just the one baby?’
‘You wants to know a lot don’t you?’ said the woman blowing her nose noisily.
‘It is very important that we know everything,’ pressed Ravenscroft.
‘There was another baby, just before this one arrived, but it died. She said it caught a chill, then had a fever. Poor mite. Don’t know where they buried it.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Bannister, you have been most helpful,’ said Ravenscroft turning away.
‘You don’t want to know about the young girl then?’ coughed the woman.
‘What young girl?’ asked Ravenscroft with great interest.
‘Don’t know her name. Arrived suddenly one day, shortly after they moved in. Never saw much of her. They kept her inside all day. Then Mrs Drew said she was gone away, unexpected like, and we never saw anything else of her.’
‘How old was this girl,’ asked Ravenscroft giving Crabb a concerned look.
‘About six or seven I would say.’
‘When was the last time you saw this girl?’
‘As I said, I never saw much of her after she had arrived. Amelia, Mrs Drew, said she had gone, sudden like. This was about six months ago I suppose.’
‘You have not seen another girl here, of about eight years of age? She may have arrived in the past few days?’ asked an anxious Ravenscroft.
‘No. There was only the one girl, the one that left.’
‘Thank you once again for your information,’ said Ravenscroft, as the woman made her way into her own house.
‘Sounds serious, sir,’ said Crabb.
‘Confound it, Tom! Why didn’t we come last night, as soon as Lucy told us her news? We might have been able to catch them all before they left,’ said an annoyed Ravenscroft.
‘Begging your pardon, sir, but we did not return to Ledbury until after eight o’clock. If Mrs Huddlestone and her party left just after six, we would have missed them anyway,’ said Crabb trying to placate his superior officer.
‘Yes, but the trail would have been warmer. They could be anywhere now.’
‘Suppose you’re right sir.’
‘The child she speaks off cannot be Mildred Chilton, as that happened some months ago, but I don’t like the sound of this at all, Tom. Put your shoulder to the door and see if it will yield.’
Crabb pushed hard against the woodwork, and after his second attempt the door gave way.
‘This must the room where Lucy was interviewed by this Huddlestone/Drew woman, or whatever she calls herself,’ said Ravenscroft looking round the sparsely furnished room. ‘Take a look upstairs Tom, whilst I see if there is anything down here which might offer us a clue as to where they have gone to.’
‘Right sir,’ said Crabb quickly striding up the steps that led from the hall.
Ravenscroft looked around the room at the furniture, but could find nothing of a personal nature. A door at the back of the room opened up onto a smaller room and then a kitchen, where only a few unwashed pieces of crockery were to be found. A back door with a cracked pane of glass in its frame, opened out onto a small backyard, where a half empty bag of coal leaned against the outer wall.
‘Nothing upstairs sir,’ said Crabb returning to the room. ‘They seem to have taken all their clothes and personal effects with them.’
‘There is nothing down here either. Something Lucy said must have frightened them, hence their sudden departure. Clearly that woman has a lot to hide.’
‘Terrible smell down here though, sir. Not so bad upstairs,’ said Crabb twitching his nose.
‘Yes, I must say that I noticed that as soon as we entered. I smelt that kind of smell once before some years ago in Whitechapel — oh, my God!’ replied Ravenscroft suddenly bringing his handkerchief to his nose.
‘Whatever is the matter sir?’
‘See if we can locate the source of that terrible smell.’
‘There is a cupboard under the stairs,’ indicated Crabb.
Ravenscroft walked over to the cupboard and flung open the doors.
‘Good God!’ exclaimed Crabb as the two men recoiled. ‘The smell is terrible.’
‘See Tom, there is some earth here, as though someone has recently dug up the floor tiles. The floor has been disturbed. I think whatever is producing that awful smell must be under this earth. I think I spotted a shovel in the kitchen, will you get it Tom,’ said Ravenscroft bringing his handkerchief again up to his nose.
‘Shall I dig, sir?’ asked Crabb returning from the kitchen holding the spade.
‘If you can bear it, Tom,’ said Ravenscroft stepping back from the cupboard area.
Crabb moved two or three shovels of earth away, before Ravenscroft cried out, ‘Stop, Tom. I think we may have found something.’
Kneeling, Ravenscroft brushed the loose earth to one side with his gloved hand.
‘Good grief sir, what is it!’ cried out an ashen faced Crabb, dropping the spade on the floor with a clatter, his hands shaking.
‘Bones, Tom — bones, and rotting flesh! If I am not mistaken I think we might have found the remains of that poor missing girl!’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
DROITWICH
As Crabb drove the trap round the winding lanes that lead from Worcester towards Droitwich, Ravenscroft remained deep in thought, oblivious to his ever changing surroundings. Three hours had passed since the discovery of the child’s bones in the house in Inkerman Street — three hours of intense activity during which the remains had been taken away to the local mortuary, and the two men had sent out descriptions of the house’s occupants to surrounding police stations. Crabb had made exhaustive enquiries at the Worcester railway stations in the hope that someone had witnessed the departure of the family, whilst Ravenscroft had interviewed the local cabmen — but on both accounts they met with no success. It was as if Amelia Drew, the old woman, and their charges, had vanished into thin air.
The doctor had been unable to say how the young girl had died, only that the corpse was several weeks old. Had she been deliberately killed by Amelia Drew, or allowed to starve to death, or had she died simply of natural causes? There was no way of telling, but if the child had been ill, and had died in a natural way, surely she would have been given a proper burial, rather than the makeshift resting place underneath the stairs of the miserable house. No, it seemed to Ravenscroft more than likely that she had been
killed by the evil woman, and disposed of in a cruel despicable way, that was beyond any human understanding.
Then there was the question of the two infants — one of them had been taken away from the house, the other one had died shortly after its arrival there, but which one had lived, Alice Corbett’s child or the baby of the deceased chambermaid from Droitwich? There was no way of telling which one had survived, and despite an extensive search of the house, no further remains had been uncovered. But what disturbed Ravenscroft the most was the thought of that poor half-starved boy whom Lucy had described to him in such vivid terms — could he be Amelia Drew’s own son, or simply just another unwanted child that the woman had taken into her household? Either way, it seemed a cruel life to be enclosed within the walls of that house, to be seen by no one, and to live continually in fear of its adult occupants. And who was Granny Thompson — what part had she played in all this? Was she related to the Drew woman, or just someone employed to take charge of the children?
Ravenscroft feared for the safety of the two remaining children. If Amelia Drew — or Huddlestone as she had called herself in her dealings with Alice Corbett — had killed the girl whose remains they’d found under the stairs, and possibly the infant as well, she would have little hesitation in ending the lives of the boy and the infant child, to say nothing of poor Mildred Chilton. It was imperative that the family be found as soon as possible, but without any lines of enquiry to follow actively, there was little that he and Crabb could do at the present, other than leave the Worcester police in charge of further investigations and to wait for a possible sighting of the family there, or in the outlying areas.
‘A penny for your thoughts, sir,’ interjected Crabb.
‘I can’t stop thinking about that poor girl under the stairs. I wish we knew how she had died.’
‘We have done all we can at present,’ said Crabb making a half-hearted attempt to break the depression of his superior officer.
‘It seems a terrible way to die, and to be buried under a pile of earth beneath the stairs of that unholy house, without ceremony or remembrance. What agonies that poor child might have suffered — it does not bear thinking about.’
‘It is a pity we did not arrive sooner.’
‘Yes, if only we had arrived last night we might have caught them in the act of leaving, or at least they would not have travelled far, but now another day has passed and they must have effected a thorough escape. All we can hope is that someone finds them sooner rather than later; we seem to have our hands more than full at the moment, Tom. I hope that the Worcester Constabulary can track down the woman and make an arrest. Unfortunately we still have Mildred Chilton to find.’
‘Do you think this Drew woman has Miss Chilton in her clutches?’ asked Crabb.
‘It does not appear so from what that woman in the street said, but in the absence of any other lines of enquiry, I suppose we must consider the distinct possibility that she was taken by that awful woman.’
‘What do we do next, sir?’
‘Do you know, Tom, I have not the faintest idea as to how we are to proceed. All our enquiries seem to have come to an end, so until we can find out where that Drew woman and the others went when they left Worcester last night, we cannot do anything. I wonder whether Mildred Chilton was with them? Do you know I find it very strange that none of the lock keepers, nor any of the canal people, reported anything unusual on the canal. If whoever took Mildred left the town along the waterway, they would surely have been seen. Any stranger with a finely dressed nine-year-old girl, would have stood out like a sore thumb in such surroundings,’ continued Ravenscroft.
‘I thought you said that whoever took Miss Chilton must have remained in the town, as he, or she, must have been there to kill Old John?’ suggested Crabb.
‘Yes, I suppose you’re right, Tom, and yet all our searches in empty building in the town have yielded nothing. I am just clutching at sinking straws, Tom.’
‘Straws don’t sink sir; they float.’
Ravenscroft said nothing as he turned away.
A few minutes later Crabb bought the horse to a standstill outside the police station at Droitwich.
‘We might as well see whether any telegrams have arrived for us,’ said Ravenscroft without any degree of expectancy, as he stepped down from the trap and walked into the station.
‘Any news,’ asked Ravenscroft addressing the uniformed officer who was busily writing in a large ledger on his desk.
‘No news of the missing girl, but this has just arrived for you sir,’ said the officer handing his superior an envelope.
Ravenscroft tore open the envelope and read the enclosed telegram—
‘POSSIBLE SIGHTING OF MISSING GIRL. LOCK KEEPER, TARDEBIGGE.’
‘Where is Tardebigge?’ asked Ravenscroft eagerly.
‘It is on the Worcester–Birmingham canal sir, just north of where it joins up with the Droitwich Junction Canal from here,’ replied the constable.
‘How far is it?’
‘About eight or nine miles as the crow flies sir.’
‘Can you take us there?’
‘Indeed I can, sir. May I ask—’
‘Possible sighting of Mildred Chilton. Come with us, man. Crabb, harness the horse again,’ interrupted Ravenscroft, quickly leading the way out of the station and jumping into the trap.
Their journey took them along the road that ran beside the canal, until they reached the hamlet of Hanbury. Here Crabb swung the trap left onto another road which headed northwards along country lanes; their route took them away from the canal for a while, but followed the railway line. Some buildings soon came into view.
‘Stoke Prior sir,’ said the constable indicating the name of the village where the road, railway line and canal all seemed to converge together.
‘How much further to this Tardebigge?’ asked an impatient Ravenscroft.
‘The flight of locks starts about a mile or so ahead of us, sir.’
‘Then let us hope that we are in time to rescue Mildred Chilton,’ replied Ravenscroft. ‘How far is it to Worcester, down the canal, from this point?’
‘About ten miles I would say, sir,’ replied the constable.
‘Time enough for Drew and her party to have travelled up here along the canal since yesterday evening. We should have considered that they would leave Worcester this way. We were too busy, Tom, checking the trains and cabs,’ remarked Ravenscroft reproaching himself for having not thought of this line of enquiry.
Crabb urged the horse onwards along the side of the canal, until a lock gate and keeper’s cottage came into view.
‘Stop here!’ shouted Ravenscroft observing that the lock keeper was sitting on an old bench outside the building. ‘Are you the gentleman who sent us the telegram?’ he said addressing the keeper.
‘If you are the police, then that be so,’ replied the man drawing on an old wooden pipe at the corner of his mouth.
‘I’m Inspector Ravenscroft investigating the abduction of Miss Mildred Chilton. Your telegram reports a possible sighting of the girl,’ said Ravenscroft dismounting from the trap.
‘That’s what I said. Man, woman and girl on one of the boats.’
‘Can you tell me whether the girl you saw was this one?’ asked Ravenscroft removing the photograph of the missing girl from his coat pocket and passing it over to the keeper.
‘Well?’ asked an impatient Ravenscroft after a few moments had elapsed.
‘I don’t rightly know. I didn’t get a good look at her. I didn’t have me spectacles on at the time.’
‘For goodness sake, man, is this the girl or not?’
‘Well I thinks so, although I wouldn’t like to swear it were her. Never seen them, nor their boat before on these waters. They was certainly acting strange,’ replied the man taking another draw on his pipe before landing a large spit on the ground near Ravenscroft’s feet.
‘What do you mean, they were acting strange?’ asked Ravenscroft feelin
g his patience being truly tried as he retrieved the photograph.
‘Well, when they went through the lock gate, the girl was standing on the deck of the barge, and when I looked across at her, the man pushed her down through the hatch, quickly like, as though he didn’t want me to see her close up, if you gets my meaning.’
‘You say there was a man, woman and young girl on board. Did you happen to see or hear either a young boy or a baby?’
‘No, there was no babby, nor any young lad.’
‘They could have been below, sir,’ suggested Crabb.
‘How long ago was all this?’ asked Ravenscroft.
‘About four or five hours ago,’ replied the man spitting again onto the ground, and narrowly missing Crabb’s left boot.
‘Four or five hours ago!’ exclaimed Ravenscroft. ‘They could be half way to Birmingham by now.’
‘Ah well, that’s where you be wrong. There be nearly another thirty lock gates to get through before they gets through Tardebigge. They won’t have got far.’
‘Thirty lock gates?’ queried Crabb.
‘It’s the incline see. Has to be thirty lock gates. It’s called the Tardebigge Flight; one of the seven wonders of the English canal system.’
‘Then we may still be in time to save Mildred Chilton. Quickly man, describe this barge to us?’ urged Ravenscroft.
‘An old decrepit tub it was. Red with green line round it. Called the Grasshopper I believe.’
‘Tie up the horse, Tom. We may do better on foot,’ instructed Ravenscroft before setting off at a brisk pace along the towpath, closely followed by Crabb and the other constable.
‘And a good day to you as well, sir,’ grumbled the lock keeper, before aiming another spittle of saliva in the horses’ direction.
As the trio ran along the towpath they looked across at the various barges making their way through the numerous lock gates.
‘The lockkeeper said they couldn’t have got far,’ shouted Ravenscroft.
‘Look sir, there she is!,’ called out Crabb suddenly, pointing ahead of them to a red barge making its way further up the canal. ‘And that looks like Mildred Chilton standing on the deck sir, with her back towards us.’
