A Medal For Murder: A Kate Shackleton Mystery

by Frances Brody

  As he picked up the eyeglass to demonstrate, I quickly looked round the tidy room.

  He held the eyeglass between finger and thumb. ‘You place it on the lower lid, like so. It rests under the bone of the eyebrow.’

  ‘It suits you very well. May I try it?’ He passed me the eyeglass. I wedged it in place. The small screwdrivers and tweezers looked suddenly larger when seen through the glass. So did the gold rand on his watch chain.

  Averting my gaze to the bench, I asked, ‘What are these little wooden cups for?’

  ‘Oh they’re to sit the movements on, keep them steady while I work. And this little vice is to hold things in place.’

  He half turned to show me the vice, and as he did I swept a wooden cup into my satchel. He had half a dozen, and would not miss one. If he had helped Lucy write her ransom note, I might find his fingerprint.

  He had also moved something out of view, a book of some description.

  Concentrating on the workbench, I said, ‘It’s such precise work. It must have been hard to learn.’ I removed the eyeglass and placed it on a mat.

  The mat was part of an ingeniously arranged wooden box with small drawers which slid out, and one of them unfolded as a mat. A man whose tools could be carried in such a compact fashion could flit from one town to another with ease.

  ‘What age did you begin this work?’

  ‘Twelve. I was apprenticed to an old watchmaker in Covent Garden,’ he said.

  ‘Then you must be a master of your craft by now, and enjoy it I should think.’

  ‘A man is never out of work if he can repair watches and clocks. Every job is the same, yet every one is different. Take this clock, for instance . . .’

  While he explained about a balance mechanism, I glanced around the room. He must have been a handy person altogether. A length of metal pipe leaned against the wall, parts of a crystal set and a listening trumpet lay on a table. Had Dan Root not looked so very English, he would have been suspected of being a spy during the Great War.

  ‘Isn’t this an odd lodging for you, Mr Root? Surely a watch mender needs light. Yet here you are, halfway below ground. Have you lived here long?’

  ‘Long enough. And there’s enough light for my purposes.’

  What are your purposes, I wondered. There was something in his tone of voice that belied the lightness of his words.

  ‘The captain says you’re his best tenant.’

  ‘Because I’m the only one who pays rent. And the only chap. He prefers his own sex.’

  I looked at him quickly to see what meaning lay behind his words, but he concentrated on his cigarette, drawing deeply.

  The house door above opened and slammed shut. Miss Fell going out, or the captain returning?

  ‘The play must have been a great diversion for you, Mr Root.’

  He smiled. ‘Have you tried resisting Miss Jamieson once she gets an idea in her head? She was short of males. Living next door to her, I had no chance of avoiding conscription.’

  The captain’s footsteps thumped the ceiling, then came to a stop. I pictured him standing by the tigerskin rug. A moment later a tap-tap sounded down the chimney as the captain emptied the ash from his pipe, and coughed.

  ‘It must have brought you closer, three of you from this one house taking part in the play, you, Meriel and Lucy.’

  ‘I was very useful to escort the ladies home, mostly Lucy because Meriel would stay behind to write her director’s notes.’

  So he had walked Lucy home from rehearsals. They must have got to know each other very well.

  He moved towards the door. ‘Let’s sit outside. I spend far too much time in here as it is.’

  That left me no choice but to follow him. Yet if he had been hiding Lucy, I would have heard or seen some sign. There was only one door, apart from the cupboard, which I guessed led to a kind of keeping pantry.

  We sat on the low garden wall. ‘It must be a solitary business, working alone down there.’

  He shrugged. ‘The watch and clock business in Harrogate is all tied up by the jewellers in the centre. People take their timepieces there, not knowing that they’re sent to me. I don’t complain. My living is reasonable.’

  ‘Have you been in Harrogate long?’

  ‘I’ve travelled about,’ he said. ‘Harrogate suits me. Plenty of watches and clocks here, plenty of work, and the air is pleasant. Do you know, the humidity here is lower than anywhere else in the country?’

  ‘For a man who is conscious of health benefits, I’m surprised you work in a basement. It must put a strain on your eyes.’

  ‘I’m by the window, and I have gas light.’ He stubbed his cigarette. Turning the subject away from himself, he asked, ‘Will you be taking the waters while you’re in Harrogate?’

  ‘I have booked into a hotel, so I may just do that.’

  He smiled. ‘Sulphur or iron?’

  ‘I don’t know. What do you recommend?’

  ‘Neither, to drink. They stink and are vile. But to bathe, either is very pleasant, especially when warm.’

  In a moment he would go back to his work. What was keeping me from asking him about Lucy? The thought that the more people knew she was missing, the more her reputation might suffer. I had a shrewd suspicion that Dan Root knew more than he was letting on.

  ‘You and Lucy were very good in the play. Do you think you’ll be in another?’

  ‘No!’ he said emphatically. ‘Not if I can help it.’

  ‘I sat next to Mr Wheatley in the theatre last night. He was very complimentary. He seemed to think Lucy might have the talent to go on stage.’

  It was a wild try, but it worked.

  Dan smiled, and there was a gleam of something like pride in his eyes. ‘Is that what he said?’

  ‘Yes. I think he meant it too.’

  I wanted to know why she needed a thousand pounds. And I wanted to know what Dan Root was keeping quiet about. I pressed on. ‘All of the other players have occupations, but not Lucy. I should think she’s at a bit of a loose end now.’

  He said softly, ‘You’ve guessed haven’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We walked home together most nights. Lucy loved being in the play. She’s quite stage-struck.’

  ‘Ah, of course. And that would not meet with the captain’s approval.’

  ‘Hardly.’ He sucked in his breath. ‘It must be the worst-kept secret in Harrogate that she intends to become an actress. I said I wouldn’t tell, but I don’t see what harm it will do if you’re going back to Leeds after you take the waters. She intends to go to London, to study acting. She has been offered a place at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.’

  Suddenly it made sense that when Lucy thanked me for the spare photographs she said they were ‘useful’. She had sent, or taken them with her, for an audition at the drama school.

  ‘How could she have done that without anyone knowing?’

  ‘I didn’t say no one knew.’ He jerked his thumb towards the flat above. ‘Captain Wolfendale doesn’t know.’

  Dan Root stretched to his full height, ready to go back to his work. It amazed me that this tall, well-built man could have played the crafty old miser, and the hunched revivalist preacher, and the doomed manufacturer who took his own life. ‘Sorry. I have watches to attend to. If I don’t get them back to the shop before teatime, I shall be disappointed with myself.’

  I stayed put on the wall. ‘Hang on, you can’t tell me half a tale. If Lucy plans to run off to the thespians, what would she be running away from?’

  ‘You’d have to ask her.’

  There was a challenge in his voice, and a sad smile. He knew she was missing, I felt sure of it. The thought of that gave me goose bumps. It made me wonder whether he had gone to Moony’s, offering his watch chain, robbing the man, sharing the loot with Lucy. And now, she was on the next phase of raising money. This time from her grandfather.

  Or perhaps the shock of finding a body was sending me peculiar and there
were no connections whatsoever.

  I persisted, keeping up my end of our conversation. ‘But you have a good idea of what she’d be escaping.’

  He sighed. ‘Like you, I’m only guessing. A dull marriage perhaps?’

  ‘To whom?’

  He shook his head enigmatically. ‘I could not possibly say.’ He smiled. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me.’

  I felt like Alice in Wonderland, being toyed with by the Cheshire cat.

  I watched him turn away, go back into his room, and close the door firmly behind him.

  Something was nagging away at me, something to do with Dan Root. And then it clicked. Dan was an eavesdropper. He listened in to what went on in the captain’s flat. That was why he did not want me to stay in his room after the captain had returned just now.

  It had been the same yesterday when I was desperate to take the weight off my feet and he would not ask me in. I remembered where he had been sitting, and how it had seemed slightly odd at the time that he was by the hearth, leaning forward so intently. The metal pipe I had seen by Dan’s fireplace was part of a listening device. The sound of the captain walking across the room and knocking out his pipe had travelled down the chimney. All Dan had to do, to hear more, would be to attach the listening trumpet to the metal pipe. He could then overhear whatever went on between the captain and Lucy. But what would be of interest about that? Presumably he would know that Lucy expected an inheritance, and was not about to receive it. He would know that Lucy refused the idea of being bartered into marriage.

  Dan would also know what had taken place between the captain and the late Mr Milner. He had listened in when the old comrades played their board game of Called to Arms. That was how he knew that Lucy was set to have a “dull marriage” as he put it, though I would have said horrendous.

  Was Lucy connected with Milner’s death? Milner certainly would have let her come close enough to put a dagger through his heart.

  For a few moments more, I remained on the low wall, taking out my notebook, jotting down what I had learned so far, along with the names of people who could know more than they were telling.

  Meriel Jamieson

  If true that Lucy has place at RADA, Meriel must have helped – audition piece, etc. Has she put her up to demanding money?

  Rodney Milner

  He and Lucy friends since childhood. But not in Lucy’s confidence.

  Dylan Ashton

  Knows more than he admits? Check for his prints on the ransom note and envelope. House agency – empty properties for hide-out?

  Captain

  Why so against involving police? Because of Lucy’s reputation, or darker reason?

  Dan Root

  Lucy confided in him about drama school. Knows more than letting on.

  Geerts, Loy and Olivia

  Unlikely to be involved in ransom, but Monsieur Geerts strong suspect in Milner’s murder.

  Alison Hart

  Too upset about own situation to lie. Rule out.

  A.N. Other

  Who?

  I snapped the notebook shut. Eliminate the obvious. If I were Lucy, where would I hide? I would not risk being seen out and about, but would keep the plan simple. There was an uninhabited top floor in the house that Meriel had said the captain used for storage. Where better to hide than the last place her grandfather might think to look?

  I walked up the stairs to the front door and through into the hall.

  With the thought that Dan Root might be downstairs listening, I gave up on the idea of knocking on the captain’s door and instead climbed the stairs, past the first floor where Miss Fell’s Pekinese yapped a warning, and up to the top floor and the unoccupied flat.

  The simplicity appealed to me. Lucy could be here in this very house, on the unoccupied top floor. The last place her grandfather would think to look.

  The Pekinese yapped with every step I took on the narrow runner of threadbare carpet that led me upwards. A large spider web covered a corner of the stained-glass window on the landing. The lock to the top flat was the old-fashioned type that did not take much picking. Closed curtains made the room dark and stuffy. My task would not need much light, but I drew the curtains back all the same. The furniture, covered in dust sheets, offered hiding places.

  I walked through the drawing room, where the paintings on the wall were covered with sheets. Arranged between the paintings was an array of British weaponry, with labels attached. It struck me that these could be valuable, as a job lot. Did Lucy think her grandfather could pawn or sell them, and raise her ransom? I jotted down the names: Lee-Enfield Cavalry Carbine 303”; Martini-Enfield Artillery Carbine 303”; Long Lee-Enfield Rifle MkI 1902; Webley Revolver MkIII calibre 455”; Webley WG Army Model Revolver. On another wall were mounted swords, some very old, sabres with curved blades and elaborate handles. Two other swords were straight and plain. A rifle sword bore the supplier’s name, Gordon Mitchell & Co., Cape Town. A display cabinet held a bone-hilt dagger with wood scabbard. It was about nine inches long, the blade comprising two thirds of the length. It had what looked like a sharp diamond cross-section blade. Although I had not got a close look at the knife that killed Mr Milner, I found myself examining this one closely. The shelf of the cabinet where it lay looked cleaner than the others, as though someone may have wiped a cloth across, concealing the fact that dust may have gathered around a missing knife. But surely that was fanciful. Dust would not gather on a closed cabinet shelf, would it? All the same, something looked out of place. In this jam-packed room, the solitary dagger looked lonely.

  On a table, several items were displayed, as if the captain had once intended to create a private museum. It was an odd assortment: an emergency ration tin had been welded closed; there were pieces of shrapnel shell. A nasty-looking piece of metal with pointed edges bore the label ‘Caltrops thrown on ground to cripple horses of attacking Boers’.

  The weaponry and detritus of a long-ago war both fascinated and repelled me. How had Lucy borne life in this house? Small wonder she wanted to escape.

  Forcing myself to continue, I lifted the dust covers on the furniture. Speaking her name softly, I checked to see whether she had heard me approaching and was hiding under the sideboard or behind a sofa. She was not. Nor was she under the bed. A large wardrobe stood against the wall.

  I opened its door. An army greatcoat swung on its hanger. Any dresses and coats that had belonged to the captain’s aunt must long ago have been purloined by Miss Fell, or given away to some deserving person. I moved the great-coat, not expecting Lucy to be lurking behind it, but to see what else might be there. Two uniforms hung side by side. One bore a captain’s pips, the other sergeant’s stripes.

  I remembered what the captain had said, so modestly, regarding his Victoria Cross. ‘When you reach a certain rank, there are all sorts of things you just don’t have to deal with. I had a wonderful batman, never properly appreciated him. He was with me that day. He should have got that medal.’

  Could there be some clue lurking in this wardrobe, between the two side-by-side uniforms? It had crossed my mind that it was odd for a captain to play a board game with a corporal, as Milner had been. Officers and other ranks do not mix, just as society snakes do not rub shoulders with their parlour maids, except in the relationship of mistress and servant. Perhaps Milner had been the batman. But if Milner were a corporal . . . I examined the uniform again. Sure enough, there were three stripes. Perhaps I had been mistaken and Milner was a sergeant; or had been promoted later. But why would his uniform hang in the captain’s wardrobe? It did not make sense.

  An old cigar box on a sideboard contained a few photographs, of uniformed men in a barren place. The captain and his batman? Men on a hillside, by a tent, by a river. The light was dim and the photographs not very clear. There were papers in the box, beneath the photographs, two sets of army discharges, one for Rowland Oliver Wolfendale, another for Henry Lampton.

  Since this flat took up the entire top floor, it surprised
me that there was only one bedroom, and then I saw the other door.

  A huge cast-iron bath held a covered shape. Lucy? A body was covered in ragged old towels and a torn sheet. The shape did not move, not the slightest twitch. I forced myself to look closer: a head, a shoulder, legs – the outline was clear enough. A body. I froze. Watching, I hoped for the slightest movement, a sign of life, for it to be a young woman who had heard me, and was hiding. No movement, not a breath.

  Could it be Lucy, dead? Murdered by her own grandfather, who had himself written the ransom note.

  ‘Lucy?’ I went right up to it, and touched the shape. Lifeless.

  But there was no blood, no whiff of death.

  I pulled back a worn towel, a torn sheet.

  It was a figure, not unlike the tailor’s dummy that stood in the downstairs window of the captain’s flat. That one sported a Boer uniform. This one had worn khaki. The uniform had been cut to shreds. A bone-hilt dagger protruded from the chest. Straw, not innards, tumbled out.

  I shut the bathroom door quietly and leaned against it. Just my luck that the first time I get a chance to use my illicit skill of lock-picking, I enter a flat where some maniac has been before me. Was this Lucy’s work? If so, what had led her to be so thorough in her destruction of the soldier dummy?

  The sound startled me. A great roar made me believe that a tiger rug had come to life or some long-dead elephant had returned demanding its stolen tusks.

  ‘What the devil . . .!’ It was the captain, brandishing his sword stick.

  ‘I thought it best to eliminate the obvious,’ I said calmly. ‘Who has murdered your soldier doll?’

  My question diverted him for a moment. I opened the bathroom door wide so that he could see for himself what havoc had been wreaked on the life-size boy soldier. He leaned down and touched the damaged thing, a moan escaping from him.