Waxwork

by Peter Lovesey

  How gently spoken, Bell thought. He might have been telling her he had tickets for the Lyceum.

  The prisoner stood numbly. For an instant Bell thought she was going to sway.

  ‘Do you wish to sit down?’ the governor asked her.

  A shake of the head.

  ‘It is simply a stage in the legal procedure,’ he went on. ‘So far as you are concerned, it will mean that you return now to a different part of the prison, a different cell. The same officers will be in attendance. You may exercise when you wish, accompanied by them. And you may receive visitors in the cell—your husband, and your solicitor, if you wish. The regulations forbid you from receiving any form of gift from them, or from physical contact. Do you understand?’

  She was standing still with her eyes closed.

  ‘Did you hear what I said, Mrs Cromer?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I shall continue to visit you each day and you may speak to me or the chaplain if anything troubles you. I urge you again to commend your soul to the Almighty. He receives those who repent their sins.’ He signalled to the wardresses.

  They stepped forward, gripped her firmly by the arms and guided her out.

  As they walked, Bell was tempted to tell the prisoner that if she had been willing to confide in those who knew about prison routine, they could have spared her some of the pain of that experience, but she checked herself. Words would be wasted on this one. Better to see what difference the condemned cell made to Mrs Miriam Cromer.

  ‘Upstairs here.’

  They mounted one of Newgate’s iron staircases, Bell leading to unlock the door of the condemned block. ‘This way, your ladyship. If you take a look through here’—they had stopped by a window too narrow even to be fitted with bars—‘you can see the exercise yard.’

  The prisoner glanced down at a small, cobbled square in deep shadow.

  ‘That’s yours. Exclusive,’ Bell told her. ‘We’re supposed to take you down there for a constitutional any time you feel inclined. It ain’t Hyde Park exactly, but it’s a place to go, ain’t it?’

  The prisoner looked away.

  ‘Don’t you like it?’ Bell asked. ‘I suppose you can’t wait to see your new home. Come on, then.’

  They passed two open cell doors and entered the next.

  It was limewashed and lit by a gaslamp covered with a bright tin shade. There was a table with three wooden stools ranged round it. To the right was a narrow iron bedstead with a flock mattress and blankets folded on top. On a shelf built across one corner were a copper basin, some eating utensils and a Bible. A tap protruded from the corner opposite. Under it was the latrine-bucket.

  Hawkins closed the door. The sound echoed through the building.

  The wardresses watched the prisoner, waiting for a reaction. Sometimes they screamed so much that the doctor had to be called to them.

  ‘This is larger than the other cell.’

  ‘It needs to be, for three and a visitor sometimes,’ said Bell, pulling out a stool for herself. ‘We still have to watch you by turns, two at a time, day and night. It’s no different in the c.c., you know.’

  ‘What is that—c.c.?’

  Hawkins chose that moment to make one of her rare utterances. ‘Do you play cards, Cromer? We’re allowed to play cards with you. Bell and me know just about all the three-handed games you ever heard of. Nap, rummy, poker, cribbage. Cards is a wonderful way of passing the time.’

  ‘No thank you.’ The prisoner turned to Bell. ‘You didn’t answer my question, miss.’

  Damned impertinence! When she said it, that ‘miss’ never sounded like a term of respect. Bell took a pack of playing cards from her pocket and shuffled them. ‘If you really want to know, it’s the name we give the cell. “C” for cell, follow me? The first “c” could stand for cards, couldn’t it? But seeing as you don’t feel disposed to play cards, how would you care for a game of draughts instead? Then we can call it the d.c. What about that, eh?’ She rocked with laughter.

  TUESDAY, 19th JUNE

  CRIBB HAD SPENT MONDAY footing it round Brentford and Kew checking the statements in the file at Scotland Yard—work for a constable. As there was no constable assigned to the case, he had done it himself. It was a self-inflicted chore. He was unwilling to rely on any statement taken by Inspector Waterlow. So he had talked to the Brentford pawnbroker Miriam Cromer had done business with, he had seen Dr Eagle in his surgery and he had spent two hours questioning the servants at Park Lodge. Nothing significant had emerged. It was dispiriting to admit, but he could not fault Waterlow’s work.

  Over a solitary beer that evening he had concluded that whatever the outcome of this inquiry, there was nothing in it for him. If he proved beyond doubt that Miriam Cromer had made a false confession and been convicted of a crime she did not commit, the embarrassment to the judiciary, the Home Office, the police did not bear thinking about. The hullabaloo would be heard all over England. Nobody would thank him. And if his inquiry upheld the verdict of the court, it would simply underline the thoroughness of Waterlow’s work. In handing on this case, Chief Inspector Jowett had played his meanest trick.

  Tuesday morning found him in the Strand, at the office of the Portrait Photographers’ League. He had decided to make an independent check of Howard Cromer’s movements on the day of the murder.

  The League shared the second floor with an insurance broker. Cribb’s knock was answered by a worried-looking clerk in a thin suit of faded black and a frayed collar.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘This is the Portrait Photographers’ League?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Excellent. And who are you?’

  ‘Wallis, sir. The clerk.’

  ‘Well, Wallis, may I come in?’

  ‘But I don’t know—’

  ‘A member,’ Cribb said with plausible stiffness. ‘There is no objection, I trust, to a member calling?’

  ‘This is only the office,’ Wallis said, keeping a firm hold on the door. ‘Members generally meet at the Burlington Fine Arts Club, to which the League is affiliated. That is in Savile Row.’

  ‘That’s no good to me,’ said Cribb. ‘You are the man who can help me. You do have the minutes of the Annual General Meeting here?’

  ‘Somewhere, but I am not certain—’

  ‘Then kindly produce them, would you? I don’t have a lot of time.’

  The clerk took a deep breath and said, ‘That really isn’t possible this morning.’

  ‘Not possible?’ said Cribb in a shocked voice. ‘Not possible for a member to inspect the minutes of the A.G.M.? Are you familiar with the Constitution?’

  A moment later he was in the office with a copy of the minutes in his hand.

  A theory he had gently nurtured for two days took a turn for the worse as he read, ‘The Annual General Meeting at the Metropole Hotel, Brighton, 12th March, 1888. Owing to the indisposition of the Chairman, the Vice-Chairman presided. Opening the meeting, he welcomed the sixty-three members present.’

  He asked Wallis, ‘Were you at Brighton this year?’

  ‘I was, sir.’

  ‘It says here that the Vice-Chairman presided. That is correct?’

  ‘Quite correct, sir.’

  ‘The meeting opened in the morning, I believe. There was no delay?’

  ‘No delay, sir. It started sharp at eleven.’

  If Howard Cromer had opened the A.G.M. at eleven, he must have left Kew soon after nine that morning.

  ‘How long did it go on?’

  ‘It should tell you in the minutes, sir. Some time after four, as I recollect. There was an adjournment for lunch, of course. That was between one o’clock and half past two.’

  ‘Mr Cromer presided for the whole of the meeting, did he?’

  Wallis frowned. ‘Mr Cromer, sir?’

  ‘Howard Cromer—the Vice-Chairman.’

  ‘No, sir. Mr Cromer did not take the chair.’

  Cribb held out the minutes. ‘This states qui
te clearly that the Vice-Chairman presided. Mr Cromer is the Vice-Chairman, is he not?’

  ‘He is, to be sure,’ said the clerk, ‘But at the start of the A.G.M. he was not. If you recall the agenda, sir, one of the final items of business was the election of the new committee. Mr Cromer is the new Vice-Chairman. Mr Dartington-Fisher, of the outgoing committee, presided. The new committee were elected towards the end of the afternoon.’

  Cribb’s eye raced down the minutes. ‘Election of Committee for 1888/9. Messrs. D. C. Turner (Chairman), H. Cromer (Vice-Chairman) and W. Hollinghurst (Secretary) were elected unopposed. Mr J. Templeton and Mr P. Hartley-Smith were nominated for the position of Treasurer, Mr Templeton being elected by forty-seven votes to thirty-one.’

  So Howard Cromer had been in Brighton on the afternoon of the murder—or had he?

  ‘These nominations: were they made in advance of the meeting?’

  ‘Naturally, sir. If you recall the Constitution—’

  ‘Were these gentlemen present at the meeting?’

  ‘Assuredly,’ said Wallis, toppling Cribb’s theory with a word.

  ‘You’re positive?”

  ‘If it is Mr Cromer you are thinking of, I spoke to him myself at the conclusion of the meeting, sir.’

  With a click of the tongue, Cribb resumed his reading of the minutes. He wanted to see if there was any evidence that Cromer had been present at Brighton in the morning.

  ‘Here’s a queer thing,’ he presently said. ‘The Treasurer was elected by forty-seven votes to thirty-one. Would you check my mental arithmetic, Wallis? Forty-seven and thirty-one comes to more than sixty-three, doesn’t it? It states at the beginning that there were sixty-three members in attendance at this A.G.M.’

  ‘Sixty-three in the morning, sir. A number of members were unable to be present for that session from pressure of business. The election is generally held over until the afternoon to ensure that members arriving late have an opportunity to register their votes.’

  Possibilities mounting again, Cribb asked, ‘You wouldn’t recollect who arrived late?’

  Wallis shook his head. ‘My memory doesn’t go back to March, sir. Not unless’—he reached for a box-file—‘they wrote to the secretary advising him that they were unable to be present in the morning.’

  Cribb waited while the clerk sorted through the contents of the file.

  ‘A lot of these are simple apologies for absence. I dare say you sent one yourself, sir. Now here are some pinned together. These, I think—’

  ‘May I?’ Cribb whipped the small sheaf of letters out of the clerk’s hand and riffled through them. ‘Ah.’

  The first piece of new evidence to come his way. On headed notepaper from Park Lodge, dated Sunday, 11th March, 1888, Howard Cromer had written:

  ‘My dear Thorne,

  This is to advise you that I am unfortunately prevented by another commitment from attending the first session of the A.G.M. tomorrow. In tendering my apology, I assure you that I shall be present after lunch and that I wish my nomination for the Committee to stand.

  Sincerely,

  H. Cromer’

  ‘You won’t need this,’ said Cribb, pocketing it. The others he handed back.

  ‘Just a moment, sir!’

  ‘Regrettably,’ said Cribb, ‘I haven’t another moment to spare. Good day to you, Wallis.’

  Out in the Strand, he started whistling. This was a thankless assignment, but it was still pleasing to have picked up something Waterlow had missed. As he approached the Proud Peacock, he decided to treat himself to a pint of his favourite brew.

  Alone at a table under the window, he took out the letter and read it again. He was entitled to feel elated. It was a development.

  … I am unfortunately prevented by another commitment … There was no mention on the file at Scotland Yard of Howard Cromer having another commitment. The information did not incriminate him, but it destroyed the alibi everyone had assumed he possessed. He had not been in Brighton on the morning of the murder. That innocent-sounding expression ‘another commitment’ could have a sinister meaning.

  Cribb saw no difficulty in casting Howard Cromer in the role of murderer. The motive Miriam had supplied would serve equally well for him. If she had decided, after all, to confide in him, tell him Perceval had been blackmailing her for months, he might well have resorted to murder. Anyone threatening to blight Cromer’s career with scandal about his wife was touching him on the raw. Ambition and blind devotion made a dangerous combination. In Cribb’s judgment, Cromer was a man capable of resolving the problem ruthlessly.

  If he had committed murder and it had been discovered, it was possible that Miriam, blaming herself for what had happened, had agreed to make a false confession.

  It was time he tested the truth of that story of blackmail, of innocent young ladies duped into displaying their bodies for improper photographs. It was no secret to the police or anyone else that the trade in such things was centred in Holywell Street, five minutes from where he was sitting. Some half-dozen shops purveyed what they euphemistically termed ‘art studies’. They were patronised by errant schoolboys, provincials, gentlemen who should know better and Inspector Moser of Scotland Yard, whose purifying zeal was periodically praised by the Bow Street Magistrates.

  Miriam Cromer had named Holywell Street in her confession, but Cribb attached small importance to that. The information, if it was to be believed at all, came from Perceval, who was unlikely to have divulged his real source to his victim. Most probably he had mentioned Holywell Street to alarm her. The knowledge that her picture was on open sale in that quarter would be sufficient to secure any respectable woman’s co-operation. Still, it had to be investigated.

  It was a slum of a street, due for demolition in the proposed improvements to the Strand. One glance along the narrow pavement cluttered with trestle tables surrounded by silent groups of men was sufficient to discourage all but the most determined. In fact not all the trade was pernicious. A jeweller’s and two tobacconists’ provided pretexts for the not so bold to venture there.

  Cribb sifted patiently through a tray of photographs of music hall performers until the question he expected was asked: ‘Were you looking for anything in particular, sir?’

  He glanced round at the proprietor, a mid-European by his accent, shabby, in carpet slippers and wearing pebble glasses. ‘Yes, these are not exactly to my taste. Artistic subjects interest me more. Do you have anything after the style of Lord Leighton?’

  ‘Lord Leighton. I think I know what you mean, sir. Something illustrative of the classic myths, eh? If you would care to step inside … ’

  The tray he was shown contained about sixty faded photographs of women so well concealed in gauze that they would not have looked out of place at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet. In the next twenty minutes he graduated by trays to what were labelled poses plastiques, arrangements of listless models in thick fleshings.

  ‘You have nothing more’—he turned his eyes towards the inner part of the shop—‘artistic than these?’

  The proprietor shook his head. ‘Not at present, sir. I may, of course, get some. If you could come back on another occasion … ’

  This required a different approach. By conventional methods it would take a week to win the confidence of Holywell Street.

  Farther up was a shop sporting a green awning with the words Gallery of Fine Art—J. Brodski (prop.) Cribb marched straight in and found J. Brodski.

  ‘Where can we talk in confidence?’

  He was shown to an office at the back. It contained a desk heaped with old newspapers and unwashed crockery. There was a smell of stale cigar smoke.

  Brodski looked anxious, a fat, bearded man with restless eyes and bad teeth.

  ‘You know who I am?’ barked Cribb.

  Brodski whispered, ‘Police?’

  Cribb flourished his identification.

  ‘Mr Moser he was here last month,’ protested Brodski in a voice of alarm. ‘So
help me, it is true. My case it came up at Bow Street Friday. I was fined twenty-five pounds.’

  ‘Twenty-five pounds!’ Cribb started to laugh.

  ‘Please tell me what is funny about that.’

  Cribb let him flounder a little. ‘You say you were fined twenty-five pounds!’

  The sweat was beading on Brodski’s forehead.

  ‘I don’t deal in misdemeanours,’ Cribb went on, articulating the word with contempt. ‘Do you think it interests me what smutty little pictures you keep locked in the drawer of this desk? You could have the Queen herself mother-naked on a tigerskin rug. I don’t care a twopenny damn. The crime I’m investigating will get you put away for life, Brodski. That’s if your life is spared.’

  Brodski had turned the colour of the awning outside his shop. ‘Please, I do not understand,’ he said in a strangled voice.

  ‘Of course you understand,’ said Cribb, tight-lipped. ‘There’s a man dead, Brodski. Murdered. He came here last winter to buy pictures of this woman.’ He took out the photograph of Miriam Cromer and pushed it across the desk.

  ‘Straight, I never see this lady in my life!’ squeaked Brodski. ‘God strike me down, I know nothing of this thing.’

  ‘You’re lying!’ said Cribb in a snarl. ‘He bought some pictures, three or four at least, one called Aphrodite with Handmaidens. He came back in March and asked to buy the plates.’

  ‘No, no! I swear it—I never sell such picture. You make the mistake, please believe me.’

  Cribb sat grim-faced through the histrionics.

  ‘You don’t believe?’ finished Brodski.

  ‘Not a word.’

  The fat man pitched into another crescendo. ‘This not the only picture shop in Holywell Street. There is four, five others. Maybe this man go there. You think?’

  Cribb shook his head.

  ‘What will happen?’ asked Brodski in despair. ‘What you do with me now?’

  ‘Find me an envelope. A clean one.’

  Brodski unlocked the desk and rummaged through the drawer, in his confusion uncovering prints enough to put him away for months.