by Trow, M J
The Head of the Criminal Investigation Department brushed his cravat and straightened his moustaches.
The Vicar’s Daughter
It took Constable Dew nearly ten minutes to find it in the atlas.
‘Here it is, sir,’ he told Lestrade. ‘Wildboarclough.’
‘Ridiculous name,’ grunted Lestrade.
‘About six miles from Macclesfield, sir, as the crow flies.
Lestrade did not fly. He caught a series of trains as far as Macclesfield and hired a pony and trap to get him on to the Pennines towards Wildboarclough. It was early May, but there was no sign of Spring up here. He was within a crow’s flight of the Cat and Fiddle Inn, one of the highest in England. It was a hiker’s paradise, but Lestrade saw no hikers today. As his pony climbed the narrow twisting roads, the snow lay crisp in the hollows. On the higher slopes above him, he saw the sheep, huddling together for shelter against the biting wind. He passed a lamb, dead by the roadside on the open moors. Its eyes had been pecked out by crows – one of those Dew was thinking of, no doubt, that flew from Macclesfield.
As Lestrade rattled into Wildboarclough, the moors were less visible. There were deep chasms here, haunting and dark, sheer cliffs of northern granite rearing up above the bare, still, winter trees. He passed the new post office, specially built for Her Majesty’s visit to Lord Derby’s estate and the school. The vicarage was away to the left, above the small, grey church. All the houses were grey, tall and silent, stark against the evergreen clumps of rhododendron bushes.
A housekeeper-shaped woman answered the door as the gardener took charge of the pony and trap. Lestrade explained who he was and was shown into a drawing room. He peeled off his doeskin gloves and cupped his hands over a minimal fire. As he watched it, it went out, leaving a single spiral of smoke. Lestrade contented himself with blowing on his fingers, trying to bury their tips into the thawing fronds of his moustaches. He stamped up and down trying to remember when he had last felt his feet. The books on the ceiling-high shelves were what he would have expected – theological tomes, discursive works on ecclesiastical history.
‘Inspector Lestrade?’
The inspector turned to face a bull-necked, purple-faced man about twice his own width. ‘Swallow.’
Was this an old Cheshire custom, wondered Lestrade. Or perhaps a cure for frostbite. He was in the act of complying with the command when the realisation dawned – ‘Inspector Swallow, Cheshire Constabulary.’ Lestrade hoped his Adam’s apple had not been too visible as he shook the inspector’s hand.
‘Bad business,’ Swallow grunted.
‘What happened?’
‘I may as well be blunt,’ Swallow announced grumpily. Looking at him, Lestrade wondered how he could be anything else. Swallow crossed to the window and looked out across the sweep of the lawn to the church. ‘I advised ’em against it. I said we could handle it. I said we didn’t need t’Yard.’ Fearing he had been too blunt, he turned to Lestrade. ‘Nothing personal, of course.’
Lestrade waved the insult aside. ‘We all follow orders, Inspector,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid this thing may be bigger than both of us.’
‘Meaning?’ Swallow had missed the cliché.
‘I can’t be sure yet.’
Swallow thumped a framed photograph of a teenaged girl down on the mantelpiece near Lestrade’s head. ‘Harriet Elizabeth Wemyss. Aged seventeen. Burned to death.’
‘So I gather.’ Lestrade perused the photograph. A singularly plain girl, hair parted in the centre. Very old-fashioned. Probably the living spit of her mother. Dead spit now, he supposed. Better not pursue that. Rather unpleasant.
‘I saw no damage as I came in,’ chanced Lestrade.
‘Nay, you wouldn’t. This were no ordinary house fire. If it were, d’you think we’d send for t’Yard?’
‘Your theory, then?’
Swallow was less sure of himself. ‘Look, y’d better come and see for yoursen. The Reverend ain’t home yet awhile. He won’t mind.’
Lestrade was surprised to see Swallow apparently showing signs of sentiment or at least respect. He followed the burly policeman up the broad staircase, past the stained glass and The Light of the World. The body, what was left of it, lay on a bed in a room at the end of the passage. It was barely recognisable as human form, much less the girl in the photograph.
‘I ’ope you’ve got a strong stomach, Lestrade,’ grunted Swallow. ‘They’ll be taking her away t’Congleton later today. If y’ want to examine the body, y’d best do it now.’
‘Who certified the death?’
‘T’local doctor. Chap called Marsden.’
‘Cause of death?’
Swallow looked askance at Lestrade. Is this t’Yard? he thought to himself. The man’s some kind of cretin.
‘Burning,’ he answered.
Lestrade looked at the neck, or where the neck should have been. Strangulation would be impossible to detect. He looked at the rest of the body, charred and shrivelled. Perhaps a coroner could find something on that wreck, though he’d have to be a damned good one. But Lestrade couldn’t. He must assume that burning it was.
‘Tell me what happened,’ he said.
‘Can we go back t’drawing room?’ Swallow looked surprisingly green. Lestrade followed him down the stairs. At the bottom the Reverend Wemyss met them on his way in through the front door. Within seconds he was knee deep in cats. Introductions were brief and to the point. The Vicar carried two of his favourite animals through into the drawing room. A third cat had twined its way round Lestrade’s neck. Wemyss stopped in his tracks.
‘Mrs Drum!’ he barked.
The housekeeper bustled in amid the rustling of skirts. The Vicar rounded on her as cats flew in all directions. ‘You’ve had a fire in here!’
Mrs Drum dissolved into instant tears. ‘I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t think. We had guests …’
‘Guests!’ The Vicar was purple. Mrs Drum indicated Lestrade. ‘I have forbidden any fires in this house, Mrs Drum. You will take your notice.’
The housekeeper exited among floods of tears. Wemyss visibly calmed himself down and instructed the officers of the law to sit.
‘Please forgive me, gentlemen. As you can imagine, this is something of a trying time for us all.’
‘Of course, Mr Wemyss,’ said Lestrade. ‘It is my painful duty, however, to ask you some questions.’
‘Quite so, Inspector. But first, would you like some tea?’
‘Thank you, sir.’
The Vicar pulled a bell cord, then settled back to fondle his cats. A maidservant swept in, curtsied and stood motionless. ‘Tea, Hannah,’ then, as an afterthought, ‘No, wait. I have said no fires. We will have lemonade.’
Lemonade on top of a long, cold journey was not Lestrade’s idea of a good time. But then, he was hardly here to enjoy himself.
‘I have, of course, already made a statement to Inspector Swallow and his constable,’ began Wemyss, ‘but I understand it is police procedure to repeat oneself several times.’
‘Occasionally, new points come to light, sir,’ observed Lestrade. ‘Pray continue.’ And he could have kicked himself for that remark.
‘I was attending a Temperance meeting in Macclesfield. This was, let me see, Thursday. The day before yesterday. I arrived home by trap, early evening. It was already dark. As I alighted and Beddoes was taking the pony, I heard the screams from within the house. I went in and found …’ He paused, but seemed remarkably in control of himself. ‘My wife and my daughter’s governess, Miss Spink, were there ahead of me, both hysterical. The charred thing that was once my daughter was lying on the landing floor …’ Another pause. ‘Unrecognisable.’
Swallow slurped his lemonade at an unfortunate, poignant moment.
‘I should explain,’ Wemyss went on, ‘that my wife and Miss Spink had themselves been absent, visiting the local elderly. They had arrived home moments before me.’
‘And the servants?’ asked Lestrade.
‘Only Mrs Drum was in the house. The maid Hannah does not live in and it was her day off. Beddoes we share with the schoolmaster. He had been on the premises an hour or two only, before I arrived. I never allow him in the house.’
Charity, mused Lestrade, did not begin at home in this establishment.
‘Have you anything to add?’ he asked.
Wemyss stood up, disarranging cats as he did so. ‘God moves in mysterious ways, Inspector. I long ago joined Brutus in his acceptance of death among his dear ones. It must happen one day and, knowing that, I can accept it.’
Lestrade and Swallow found themselves nodding in unison, like things on sticks at a fairground. They noticed each other and broke the rhythm.
‘I’d like to show you something.’ Wemyss selected a faded book from the shelf. ‘The Annual Register for the year of Our Lord 1767. I have taken the trouble to mark the pages.’ He read an extraordinary account. ‘A lady found burned to death in her bedroom in her London house. An old lady, certainly, but there was no source of fire. No candles, no grate, no tallow. Nothing particularly inflammable. She simply burned to death,’ concluded Wemyss. ‘A sort of … spontaneous combustion, I suppose you would call it.’
‘You mean, like a ’orselesscarriage, Vicar?’ asked Swallow, quite perplexed. Wemyss and Lestrade both looked at him, and he sank back in his chair.
‘Can that happen, Mr Wemyss?’ asked Lestrade.
‘According to the Annual Register, it did in 1767, Inspector Lestrade. But no, I think not. You see, I think my daughter was murdered.’
Lestrade looked at the older man. What sort of a murderer would kill a seventeen-year-old girl – the daughter of a vicar? It could have been a sexual crime, of course, but the state of the body made that hypothesis unprovable. It seemed inappropriate to ask the age old question, but he did anyway.
‘Did your daughter have any enemies, Mr Wemyss?’
‘Inspector, my daughter was a shy little girl of seventeen. She had very few friends, poor lamb. We are rather remote up here, you know. But enemies … no, Inspector. She hadn’t an enemy in the world.’
‘Then why do you say she was murdered, sir? And why call in the Yard?’
‘To answer your second question first. I have always insisted on the best for my family – the best food, the best clothes, the best education – which is not, mark you, your North London Collegiate School – and, without wishing to offend Swallow here, the best police.’
Lestrade bowed in acknowledgement of the compliment.
‘To answer your first question. Because I don’t believe in this,’ pointing to the Register. ‘I do not believe that a person can burn to death by themselves. There has to be a rational explanation. My daughter’s body was found upstairs on the landing. There were no fires in the upstairs rooms. It was rather warm for May.’
Lestrade winced as he wondered what a cold May must be like.
‘I shall examine the scene of death again a little later, sir,’ he said, ‘but first I would like to talk to your wife, Mr Wemyss.’
‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible, Inspector. You see, my wife is distraught. She is staying with her sister in Congleton. I must insist that she is not disturbed. Our doctor has warned that it would be unwise in her mental state.’
Lestrade glanced at Swallow for confirmation. The bluff Cheshire policeman nodded gravely. He had presumably seen Mrs Wemyss, Lestrade conjectured. Her testimony would be unhelpful.
‘Then I must speak to Miss Spink.’
‘Of course. I shall send her to you at once.’
But Wemyss had not reached the door when a silently weeping Mrs Drum appeared. ‘I’m on my way, sir,’ she managed between sobs, indicating a valise in her hand. ‘Beddoes will send my trunk on. In the meantime …’ At this point, coherent words failed her completely, and she merely indicated the entrance of visitors by a wave of her hand, clutching a copious white handkerchief.
‘Very well.’ Wemyss remained unaffected by the woman’s distraught state. ‘Do not look to me for a reference, Mrs Drum. Your action today obliterates your former unblemished record. My dear Watts.’
Wemyss shook the hand of the new arrival, a handsome man in his mid-fifties, Lestrade guessed, sharply dressed and distinguished. Behind him minced a small auburn-haired man with the narrowest, most sloping shoulders and largest head Lestrade had ever seen. With him, Wemyss was more reserved. ‘Swinburne,’ and a stiff nod of the head was all he received. The little man nodded in turn.
‘My dear Hector, how positively dreadful. We came as soon as we heard. Swinburne hasn’t been well. How is poor Dorothea taking it?’
‘Badly, I’m afraid. You can imagine what a shock it must have been – finding poor Harriet like that. She’s with her sister in Congleton.’
‘Harriet?’ asked the newcomer.
Everyone looked at him rather oddly.
‘No, Dorothea.’
‘Ah, of course.’
Introductions were perfunctory. ‘Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard, Inspector Swallow of the Cheshire Constabulary, my dear friend Watts-Dunton, the poet. And Mr Swinburne.’
Wemyss led his friend, the poet, to the door, the latter commiserating with him as he went. The door slammed shut and Mr Swinburne stood before it, rather spare and out of place. Lestrade took Swallow aside and asked him to find Miss Spink. He then tackled the little man.
‘Algernon Charles Swinburne?’
The little man spun round as if he had been slapped. ‘It’s a lie. I wasn’t there.’ And then, more calmly, ‘Oh, forgive me, Inspector. I forgot myself.’
Algernon Charles Swinburne, the poet?’
‘I have that honour, sir.’
‘Do you recognise the style of this, sir?’ Lestrade pulled from his pocket copies of the doggerel connected with the last two murders on his mind. He suspected that this one, bizarre and tragic, may be a third, but couldn’t be sure yet.
‘They’re not mine,’ said Swinburne. ‘They’re probably Browning’s.’
Lestrade’s professional ears pricked up. Swinburne knew something. ‘Indeed?’
Swinburne relaxed a little now and sat on the settee. He reached in his pocket for a hip flask and uncorked it. ‘Oh,’ he paused, eyes pleading pathetically, ‘you won’t tell Watts-Dunton, will you? He thinks I’ve given it up.’
Lestrade waved aside the possibility.
‘This Mr Browning. Would you happen to know where he is?’
‘Westminster Abbey.’
‘Poet’s Corner?’
Swinburne nodded.
‘You would assume that these verses were written recently?’
‘Beats me!’ Swinburne said and chuckled to himself. ‘Browning’s been dead these two years.’
Another brick wall reared up at Lestrade, but Swinburne was already off on another tack.
‘Tell me about police brutality,’ he said.
‘Sir?’
‘Oh, come now, Inspector. When you have a man in custody – what is that quaint euphemism you chaps use – “helping the police with their enquiries” – isn’t that it? What do you use? Truncheons? Whips? Thumbscrews?’ His voice rose imperceptibly by degrees as he spoke, savouring each word. His knuckles were white as he gripped the arm of the settee. Lestrade narrowed his eyes as he began to see Mr Swinburne’s problem.
‘Rubber tubing,’ he said.
Swinburne’s mouth sagged open with pleasure and astonishment. Lestrade became confidential. ‘It doesn’t show, you see.’
Swinburne’s voice was a rasping whisper. ‘Where do you do it?’
‘Cell Block A.’
‘No, no, I mean where on the body? Buttocks, thighs?’
‘No, thank you,’ said Lestrade. ‘I am trying to give them up.’
He left the room as Swinburne took refuge in his hip flask, and slowly began to tighten the knot of his tie so that his eyes bulged and his colour rose. ‘Chastise me!’ were the last words Lestrade heard as he made for the stairs.
<
br /> In the study sat Miss Spink, a prim, demure lady in her mid-thirties, hair strained back in the characteristic bun of the professional spinster. Swallow stood behind her like something out of a studio photograph.
‘I would like to see you alone, Inspector,’ she said to Lestrade. Swallow was about to object but Lestrade’s gesture of the head sent him shambling to the door, grunting under his breath the while. ‘Mr Swinburne is in the drawing room, Inspector,’ Lestrade called after him. ‘See that he doesn’t come to any harm, there’s a good chap. And don’t let him put your handcuff on!’
‘Inspector?’
‘Ma’am.’ Lestrade sat down in front of the governess. She was not conventionally attractive, perhaps, but there was a certain something about her. She gazed deeply into Lestrade’s eyes. ‘I could not bear to tell that oaf,’ she motioned to the retreating figure of Swallow, ‘but I feel there is something you should know.’
‘I am all ears, ma’am.’
Miss Spink swept upright with a rustle of petticoats. She turned her back on Lestrade. ‘This is very difficult for me, Inspector. You can’t imagine what a shock all this has been.’
Lestrade sensed when a particular approach was needed with a witness. He laid a reassuring hand on the governess’ arm. She gasped and pulled back, but the expression on her face indicated that it had been precisely the right thing to do. She blushed and glanced at the ground. ‘Harriet was seeing … a man,’ she said.
‘A man, ma’am?’
‘All men are beasts, Inspector,’ she suddenly shouted, then realised the stupidity of the remark. ‘Forgive me. Present company is of course excepted.’
‘This man – who is he?’
‘I don’t know, Inspector. I have been guilty of neglect. I beg of you, don’t tell the Reverend or Mrs Wemyss. I could not bear for them to know the truth.’
‘And what is the truth, ma’am?’
Miss Spink began to cry, decorously, of course, into a tiny lace handkerchief. Lestrade was the soul of consolation as she gradually pulled herself together.
‘I regularly accompanied Harriet to Macclesfield. Beddoes drove us in the trap. We would visit the library, and the tea-rooms and on fine days walk in the park. Occasionally we would go further afield – to Buxton to the pump-rooms, for example, or Congleton.’
