Waxwork

by Peter Lovesey

  ‘He was not hostile towards you?’

  ‘No, I would not say so. Sharp, yes, but that was his manner, I suspect.’

  ‘He went away satisfied?’

  The husband shrugged. ‘He should have been.’

  ‘But you formed an impression to the contrary?’ The prisoner watched him keenly. Bell had never seen her so attentive.

  The husband drew himself up a little on the stool. ‘Well, my dear, there has been a development since which compels me to conclude that the inquiries are continuing.’

  ‘The second visitor you mentioned?’

  ‘Yes. He arrived yesterday afternoon.’ He beamed reassuringly. ‘I wish you had seen him, Miriam. He would have amused you. Picture him in the reception room, if you can. A strongly-built fellow with a black beard and a broad face scarred down one side, and rather bulbous eyes. He was in a black suit very shiny from wear and a brand-new butterfly collar on a shirt that was frayed at the cuffs. But, my dear, this is the joke—he was wearing a policeman’s boots!’

  The prisoner still declined to smile. ‘What did he want?’

  Her husband nodded. ‘That was what I asked him. Do you know what? He answered in a broad north-country accent—his smoking-party turn, I’m ready to wager—that he wished to arrange to have his “photo took”. What do you think of that? For some occult reason Scotland Yard had sent this buffoon to insinuate himself into Park Lodge on the pretext of sitting for his portrait! Well, you know that I suspended work in the studio after what happened in March, except for one or two long-standing appointments. I explained this to my visitor, really to see what he would say. He told me his name was Holly and he was down from Yorkshire for a few days on business. He wanted his “photo took” as a present for his wife, and he would be obliged if I would make an exception and give him a sitting as he had come out to Kew for the purpose, on the recommendation of the proprietor of his hotel. Hotel! In those boots, he wouldn’t get past the commissionaire. However, I am not one to obstruct an officer in the course of his duty, even if he does stoop to subterfuge. I entered into the spirit of the thing and invited him into the studio. As you may suppose, he wasted no time in getting the conversation round to Perceval. He professed great interest in seeing the very room where the “occurrence”, as he described it, took place. I showed him everything I had shown the first detective. I could see it was all he could do to restrain himself from taking out his notebook.’

  Bell glanced towards Hawkins. She had put her hand in front of her mouth. The prisoner’s husband was keeping two of his listeners entertained, even if Cromer herself showed not a flicker of amusement.

  ‘Did this man ask questions, Howard?’

  ‘Not so many as the sergeant did on Sunday, but then he could not be so direct, or I might have guessed he was a policeman! Mainly he was interested in details of circumstances, where Perceval’s body was found, where the cyanide was kept and so forth.’

  ‘Nothing more definite?’ She regarded him challengingly, as if he were responsible for the visitor’s conduct.

  He lifted his hands in an assuaging gesture. ‘I told him everything he wanted to know, dearest. I photographed him, too, against that backcloth of the Strand, just to humour the fellow.’ He took a picture from his pocket and held it for her to see.

  Bell’s interest in the husband’s story was so consuming that she had leaned forward to look before it dawned on her that what was happening was an infringement of regulations. ‘That’s not permitted, sir,’ she told him. But she had caught enough of the portrait to satisfy her curiosity, a head and shoulders view of a burly, bearded fellow with eyes like pearl buttons. A memory stirred in her brain, too elusive to recapture, and not pleasant anyway. Photographs played odd tricks at times.

  The prisoner commented, ‘From the look of him, I would say he is more brutish than acute.’

  ‘He had the intelligence to keep up the pretence,’ her husband said. ‘He gave me an address in Bradford to post the portrait to, and he insisted on paying me in advance. I expect it’s the Bradford Police Station.’ He tried to sound amused. ‘I hope they are satisfied with the result.’

  She stared at him in silence.

  Lines of concern transformed his expression. ‘Miriam, my darling, forgive me. I find this such an ordeal. I try to cloak my feelings in facetiousness and I know it is in appalling bad taste in the circumstances. The situation is so unnatural—seated here with a table between us. To be allowed only to look at you, not permitted even to touch your sweet hand. It is too cruel.’

  She said in a voice devoid of emotion, ‘You have always maintained that to look at me is all that you desire.’

  He looked abashed, as if she had rebuked him. ‘True, my dear. I meant it, of course, as a tribute.’

  For an instant the prisoner appeared on the point of saying something, but she changed her mind, simply drew a long breath.

  The husband was obviously at a loss. He filled the gap with words. ‘Take heart, Miriam. These developments must be significant.’

  ‘Have you spoken to Simon?’ she asked.

  ‘I have kept him fully informed, of course.’

  ‘And what is his advice?’

  ‘Quite simply, to wait.’

  She thought a moment, frowning. ‘Howard, that may not be the right thing now. What you have told me is disturbing. I cannot understand why they sent the second detective if he had no questions of any importance. The way it was done, sending a man to masquerade as a client, is suggestive of incompetence. We cannot tamely wait for someone to see sense. It may not happen in time. You must talk to Simon.’

  He nodded. ‘I shall go straight from here. I’ll tell him what you say, depend upon it, dearest.’

  ‘I am compelled to.’

  He started to get up. ‘You are never out of my thoughts, Miriam. When this is over … ’ He smiled encouragement. ‘Is there anything else, my darling?’

  ‘Yes. Ask Simon to visit me tomorrow morning. I want to speak to him. And Howard, I shall not expect to see you.’

  He blinked in surprise. ‘But—’

  ‘I shall not expect to see you,’ she repeated, spacing the words. ‘Do you understand?’

  He dipped his head quickly.

  ‘Howard … ’

  ‘My dear?’

  ‘I am grateful.’

  Hawkins unlocked the door to let him out. When it had closed again, the prisoner let her breath out slowly as if a crisis was past. She turned her book over and started to read.

  Sleep had not subdued Cribb’s anger. This morning in the front room the linnet was chirping and sunlight glistened on the brasses, but Jowett’s words hung in the air. ‘It is not for you to speculate on a matter that I made quite clear is not within police jurisdiction.’ Cribb stood motionless at the window, his mouth set in a tight line, eyes seeing nothing. The anger had turned inwards.

  For a week he had been occupied in a sterile exercise. Used by politicians. Yet from the start he had realised that any outcome challenging the verdict of the court would embarrass Whitehall. They had wanted him to paper over a small crack, not bring the whole edifice crashing down. Trained as he was to work on investigative principles, he had preferred to keep an open mind about the murder. Establish the facts, root out the truth and let the politicians deal with the consequences. Greenhorn!

  The wound went deeper. He had believed this case might transform his career. It hurt him to admit that now. He had supposed that seventeen years as sergeant had left him with few illusions about the future. If Millie still fondly believed someone at the Yard would soon recognise his ability, he was not so deluded. Ten years had passed since that day they had created the Criminal Investigation Department. Inspectors had been appointed to fourteen of the sixteen divisions. Of the two to which sergeants were nominated, his own was one. Why? No one had given him a straight answer. ‘Keep your defaulter sheet clean, Cribb, and who knows?’ He had kept it clean for ten years, managed one of the toughest divi
sions in the Met, and he was still a detective sergeant. Who knows? If he didn’t know by now, he was no detective at all.

  Millie would go on hoping for a miracle: he faced facts. To the high-ups he was a natural sergeant. ‘One of your door-to-door detectives, fly to everything. Not a man to waste behind a desk.’

  He had put promotion out of his mind. Yet what had happened a week ago? It had only wanted Jowett to let slip the name of Sir Charles Warren to set his pulse racing. A secret inquiry on the personal orders of the Commissioner!

  The prospect of working for Warren had given him nightmares, but he had jumped at it like any pink and scrubbed probationer given his first incident to investigate. Impress Sir Charles with a few inspired deductions and promotion was in the bag. For that he was ready to face the perils of working for the Commissioner without the sanction of the Director of the C.I.D. The real politics—the politics of Whitehall—he had not paused to consider. He deserved to stay a sergeant.

  He sighed, shook his head and turned from the window. There was nothing to be gained from self-pity. He crossed the room and opened the sideboard drawer. Pen and ink. He would write the report for Jowett and put this whole thing out of his mind. Three sheets of Millie’s notepaper.

  Report of an Inquiry into the Confession of Mrs Miriam Cromer to the Murder of Josiah Perceval at Park Lodge, Kew, on the 12th March, 1888.

  When this was done he would take it to the Yard and afterwards cross Trafalgar Square to the Haymarket to try and get tickets for that comic opera Millie had been talking about.

  How should he begin? It hardly mattered. Whatever he wrote, Jowett would revise it before it reached the Commissioner’s desk.

  Keep strictly to the facts.

  ‘1. The death by poisoning of Josiah Perceval took place at Park Lodge, Kew, on the 12th March, 1888. At the Old Bailey on the 8th June, 1888, Mrs Miriam Cromer pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to death.

  ‘2. Subsequent to the trial a photo-engraving cut from a photographic journal was received at the Home Office. It showed the husband of the prisoner at Brighton on the day of the murder wearing a key on his watch-chain which was established as being one of two keys to the poison cabinet. The other was found on the body of the deceased. The question arose as to how the prisoner had unlocked the poison cabinet on the day of the crime, as she had stated in her confession. An inquiry was ordered into the events described by the prisoner in her confession, Chief Inspector Jowett of the Criminal Investigation Department leading, assisted by A. Cribb, Detective Sergeant, First Class, M Division.’

  Cribb paused, absently touching his lips with the end of the pen. The easy bit was done. The correct procedure now was to take the confession point by point. He got up from the table and went to the shelf where he kept his papers, weighted by the black-bound Metropolitan Police Acts. Something fluttered to the floor. Millie would put her scrapbook cuttings among his things. He picked it up, a picture of some actor clipped from the Penny Illustrated Paper, and slipped it under the cover of her book. He found his copy of the confession and put it on the table. Would he require anything else? Nuttall’s Standard Dictionary, for certain.

  At the table again, his eyes ran through the first paragraph of Miriam Cromer’s confession. A general statement of her guilt. No comment necessary on that. Second paragraph.

  ‘Some time in 1882, when I was twenty years of age and lived at my family home in Hampstead, I injudiciously agreed to take part with two friends in a group photograph … ’

  Two friends. Judith Honeycutt, now dead, and Miss C. Piper.

  The newspaper report of the inquest on Judith Honeycutt had given Miss Piper’s address at Kidderpore Avenue. It was a long street in West Hampstead, off the Finchley Road. Cribb had gone there on Wednesday evening after making his inquiries about Ducane. No family by the name of Piper was known in Kidderpore Avenue. Somebody had suggested Miss Piper might have been the young lady who had lodged at old Miss Marchant’s for a few months. She had been about twenty and had come there after a disagreement of some sort with her family. She had not stayed long. By 1885 she he moved out of London. And Miss Marchant had died soon after. The house was now occupied by a family of Russian immigrants. They had no forwarding address for Miss Piper. Cribb had abandoned the search. There were scores of people with that name in London, hundreds throughout the provinces. He remembered a C.S.M. Piper from his army days, and a pet shop in Islington called Piper and Son. Hopeless, trying to locate one girl with that name in the short time left to him. He did not even know her Christian name. She could be married by now.

  Wherever she was, soon after eight on Monday morning she would be the sole survivor of the three young girls who had light-heartedly agreed to pose for a photographer six years before. If the episode had ever occurred.

  He felt in his pocket and took out the photograph of Miriam Cromer. He would need it presently for the spelling of Brodski’s name on the reverse. He put it face upwards on the table in front of him. He remembered first seeing it, enlarged, in the drawing room at Park Lodge, and trying to read her character in it: an unlikely achievement. For the camera, people put on their best expressions like Sunday clothes. Hers, to be sure, was less rigid a look than photographs generally captured. That was why he had asked for a copy of this print. It conveyed something more than the stilted studio pose. But was the conflict written on her features any guide to the way she thought and behaved?

  Looking at the picture now, he could not be objective. He saw it in terms of what he had learned. There were dangers, he knew, in speculating, but he saw the face of a young woman trapped. She was married to a man in love with her image. He prized her, treated and cosseted her not as his wife, but a subject for his camera. His bedroom was filled with her photographs. His adulation and excessive kindnesses only fomented her frustration, for how was she to express her resentment towards a husband who was infinitely kind?

  When Perceval had added to her torment, she had found a focus for her bitterness. In murdering him, had she also been destroying her husband?

  Theories. He would never know.

  Truthfully, he could not tell if it was the face of a murderess.

  He turned back to the report. Three girls: Miriam Kilpatrick, Judith Honeycutt and Miss C. Piper. So many names began with the letter ‘C’. Constance? It did not matter any more. Finish the report.

  ‘3. In the second paragraph of her confession, Mrs Cromer referred to certain photographs taken in 1882 which Perceval used for the purpose of blackmail. She stated that she and two of her friends, members like herself of the Highgate Literary and Artistic Society, were induced to pose—’

  It would not be Constance. Nor Charity, Cora, Clara. This was profitless. Miss C. Piper. How could he possibly know what it should be? Yet his brain continued to supply names. Mysteriously, he felt he would know if he got it right.

  Cynthia, Christine, Caroline.

  ‘ … unclothed or nearly so for photographs that they were informed were to be used by the distinguished artist Sir Frederick Leighton as preliminary studies for a painting of a classical subject.’

  Catherine, Celia, Charlotte.

  Charlotte Piper.

  It was practically right. Charlotte. Lottie.

  Lottie Piper.

  Cribb clenched his fist and beat it on the table. He knew how the name had got into his head. Millie had mentioned it that night he had woken from his nightmare and got up to make tea. The comic opera she wanted to see was The Mascotte, with Miss Lottie Piper.

  Another blind alley. He cursed his luck. Nothing had gone right for him. Lottie Piper had no connection with the case. But the knowledge that if she had, if he had found Miriam Cromer’s friend, he would have hared off to find her, was mortifying to accept. It was fate giving an extra twist to the knife. He still wanted to discover the truth.

  It was too much to hope that Miriam Cromer’s friend had taken up a career on the stage as Miss Lottie Piper.

  But he would
try to find out.

  He took down Millie’s scrapbook from the shelf. Scores of pages were pasted with portraits of actors and actresses. Best to start from the back. He found Lottie Piper’s picture on the second sheet, sketched in pen and ink, wide-eyed, with a skittish look, her face framed in dark curls.

  MISS LOTTIE PIPER AS BETTINA IN ‘THE MASCOTTE’

  One of the successes of the season is that of Miss Lottie Piper in the leading role of ‘The Mascotte’, the Opera Comique at the Haymarket. This charming actress, the daughter of a Hampstead stockbroker, has graced several productions at provincial theatres and now reveals a talent for comic opera which is delighting audiences in the capital.

  Finding a cab in Bermondsey was a tall order, but within minutes Cribb had stopped a four-wheeler.

  ‘The Haymarket. The Mascotte is still running, is it?’

  ‘Bless you, sir, that’ll run for months yet.’

  So he was at the stage door when her carriage drew up. She got down in a flurry of swansdown and scent, the curls proclaiming who she was, but prettier by far than the artist had made her, in a primrose-coloured skirt, emerald green jacket and matching hat with two black feathers.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ she announced (Cribb was one of five), ‘how kind of you to come! I am overwhelmed, but I must tell you that I never go for supper after the performance. It’s such a dreadful bore, but I find I need my sleep.’

  She had blown a kiss and was through the door before Cribb or the others could put in a word. With fine theatrical timing the doorkeeper appeared from nowhere and stood with arms folded.

  Cribb could have shown his identification. Instead, he started the dispersal by strolling up to Piccadilly Circus. In ten minutes he was back. There was no one left outside. Whistling, he walked in and up the stairs. He was not challenged.

  He followed the scent of freesias. Her name was on the door. Miss Lottie Piper. Much more chic than Charlotte.