England Expects

by Sara Sheridan

  The cabbie grinned. ‘You’re on,’ he said. ‘I’ll just get dressed.’

  Chapter 21

  A journey is the best medicine.

  The sun was rising as they arrived in London. Vesta had as good as passed out on the back seat after they got going. She managed to sleep most of the way to Victoria while Mirabelle watched the flat countryside slip past the car windows in the moonlight. Cyril had driven in silence and Mirabelle had time to consider what she’d heard in Marsden’s rooms. What was it, she wondered, that Daphne had found in the Pavilion that was so important? And if the men she’d overheard hadn’t killed Elsie Chapman, had they murdered Joey Gillingham, or was that someone else? The connection between the murders still wasn’t clear. Mirabelle had imagined the masons worked like a spy network, with fluid communication between their different chapters – a well-oiled machine. But it seemed not. It was obvious from the men’s conversation that one lodge had little idea what the other was up to. For all its reputation, it wasn’t much of a deadly secret club. Not a patch on the Secret Service.

  Considering this, she realised it made it more difficult to anticipate what was happening. Inefficiency was erratic. If you knew what somebody wanted, you knew how they were likely to behave. In the old days there had been only two sides: you were either with the Allies or against them. The game was to outwit the other party: everyone’s concerns were clear and their moves relatively easy to anticipate. In this situation, however, everyone was in it for their own interests: Elsie had tried to get money out of the masons, one of whom was her lover; Daphne was hell bent on revenge on her father. And heaven knew how Joey Gillingham fitted in. It was an untidy jumble that was only loosely interconnected. Everything seemed too personal.

  She resisted the urge to drink some whisky and glanced enviously at Vesta, stretched across the leather seat. She used to be the one who fell asleep while Jack stayed up thinking things through. Mirabelle imagined how it would feel if he was here now and she could simply let go and not have to be the one who was holding everything together. Had Fred been right, she wondered. Would Jack be shocked at her inability to get over his death? Would he tell her to move on and find someone else to love? She didn’t want to think about it.

  In the lemon-tinted early morning light at Victoria the women waved off the cab driver who was delighted with his bottle of whisky. ‘Just made it,’ he beamed.

  The train was almost empty and the women had a compartment to themselves.

  ‘Well,’ said Vesta as they pulled out of the station, ‘everyone seems to have forgotten about Joey Gillingham. It’s strange – we don’t even know what the poor fella looked like. I can’t see him in my mind’s eye.’

  Mirabelle thought back to Bill’s description of Ida. It’s always the women who are left, she thought. Ida and Ellie, clearing up what was left of their loved ones’ lives.

  ‘He probably looked like his sister. Fair hair and pale skin – that’s what Bill said. What’s on my mind is that Henshaw is in a tricky position. I wonder how much he knows about what else is going on? The first thing we need to do is get him taken into custody and then McGregor can untangle it all. These men all have different priorities, but whatever Daphne has laid her hand on is very valuable, and that makes it dangerous. McGregor will need to be on top of his game, that’s for sure.’

  Vesta’s eyebrow arched. It was the first time she’d ever heard Mirabelle defer to the Superintendent. ‘It didn’t seem like Henshaw murdered Elsie to me.’

  ‘No. I agree. But he did have a motive,’ Mirabelle reasoned. ‘And the men we saw won’t take long to figure that out. They certainly didn’t kill her. Not by what they said. So, they’re going to take a long hard look and track down whoever might have done it. Henshaw first, and then anyone else they reckon might be a suspect. There’s a lot at stake.’

  The early morning air was chilly in Brighton, and the women shuddered as they walked up the platform just before six o’clock. Porters were unloading boxes and trunks from the freight cars. In a solemn procession a coffin was picked up by two men driving a hearse. The porters doffed their caps in respect as it passed. Consequently, the women didn’t notice the uniformed policeman striding in their direction.

  ‘Miss Bevan?’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Mirabelle, who, Vesta noted, managed to sound as if she expected him.

  ‘I thought it was you, Ma’am. If you don’t mind, you and Miss Churchill are to accompany me to the station.’

  ‘Did Detective Superintendent McGregor send you, Constable?’

  Perhaps the Superintendent was further ahead than she expected. Perhaps he already knew at least some of what had been going on. The constable did not reply. He simply motioned them towards a black police car that was parked under the canopy at the front of the station.

  ‘This way.’

  ‘We can walk, thank you,’ said Vesta sweetly. ‘It’s a lovely day and it isn’t far to Bartholomew Square.’

  The constable thought for a moment. ‘I think it might be a matter of more urgency,’ he said, opening the car door. The women obediently slipped into the back seat. The car pulled off, heading towards the sea. It sailed past the usual turn-off to the left.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Mirabelle. ‘But I think you’ve missed the turning. Bartholomew Square is back up the hill.’

  ‘It’s not Bartholomew Square today, Ma’am.’

  ‘But Detective Superintendent McGregor doesn’t work in Wellington Road.’

  The man cleared his throat. ‘It’s not McGregor who’s asked for you.’

  This prospect was mystifying. ‘Well, who has?’ Mirabelle enquired.

  The man said nothing.

  ‘Ah,’ she said, realising.

  ‘What is it?’ Vesta asked. ‘Who’s asked to see us?’

  ‘Belton.’ She tapped the man on the shoulder. ‘He’s had you keeping an eye out for us, hasn’t he? Is that it? You’ve been watching the railway and bus stations.’

  The man kept his gaze fixed on the road. Mirabelle momentarily considered bolting. She put a hand to the door handle but realised it was locked. Besides, she couldn’t leave Vesta alone. Not again. This was all wrong.

  ‘I have to speak to Detective Superintendent McGregor.’ Her voice was officious, schoolmarmish. ‘Please. We have to go to Bartholomew Square straight away. You can take me to Belton afterwards if you like, but I need to speak to McGregor, or at the very least Sergeant Simmons. Mr Belton only wants to tick us off for leaving town, but I have information that is genuinely important. McGregor needs it.’

  The man didn’t respond.

  Vesta slipped forwards in her seat. ‘Look, it won’t do any harm if you take us to Bartholomew Square first, and it might do a lot of good. What’s your name, anyway?’

  The man ignored her. ‘We’re almost there,’ he said, rounding a corner smoothly. ‘You can’t go off like that, ignoring police orders. You can’t just waltz out of town when you’ve been explicitly told not to. It’s a serious matter, Miss.’

  ‘It’s a free country,’ said Mirabelle.

  ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘Cambridge, if you must know. It’s hardly a criminal bolthole.’

  The constable parked beside the station and switched off the engine. ‘If you’re on a report you’ve got to stick to it,’ he said. ‘Otherwise it’s just anarchy. This is England, you know.’ He got out and opened the car door, standing as if at attention.

  ‘We’d better face the music, I suppose,’ said Vesta.

  Mirabelle remained frosty. As she slipped out of the car she refused to even look at the fellow. She checked her watch – perhaps if they simply took a dressing down they’d be able to get to McGregor without too much delay.

  Inside the police station, Belton was at the front desk. The large clock on the wall behind him clicked towards six.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘There you are, ladies. I was getting worried. We’ve been looking for you for some time.’

 
; ‘They came off the London train, Sarge,’ the constable said. ‘Miss Bevan says she’s been in Cambridge.’

  ‘Cambridge, is it?’

  Mirabelle drew herself up to her full five feet five inches.

  ‘Sergeant Belton, I need to speak urgently with Detective Superintendent McGregor. I have some information relating to a murder case which is of life and death importance.’

  ‘Which murder case, Miss?’

  ‘I’m not at liberty to say.’

  ‘Where were you yesterday evening between eleven o’clock and approximately one a.m., Miss?’

  ‘I told you. Cambridge,’ Mirabelle replied. ‘Look, Sergeant . . .’

  Belton didn’t let her get further. Instead he loomed over the desk.

  ‘I saw you in Brighton at not long past four o’clock. I asked you not to leave, Miss Bevan, but it seems not more than an hour later you did just that.’ He checked his watch and totted up the hours she’d been away. ‘Can you prove you went to Cambridge?’

  ‘Why on earth would I require to prove such a thing? Sergeant, we’re wasting valuable minutes. A man’s life is at risk. Perhaps I haven’t made myself clear.’

  ‘Which man?’ Belton asked. ‘If there’s someone at risk, you can tell me. I’m a policeman, Miss Bevan.’

  Mirabelle paused. ‘Are you also a freemason, Sergeant Belton?’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. What has that got to do with it? Ma’am, you are obstructing my inquiries and frankly that question only serves to make me more suspicious of what you’ve been up to. Constable, would you please escort these ladies to the cells? We’ll need to question them more closely in due course.’

  Both Mirabelle and Vesta burst into a chorus of objection.

  Vesta suddenly felt terrified. It was only the year before that her friend Lindon had died in police custody in London. In adding her voice to Mirabelle’s she injected a tone of panic to the proceedings. It had no effect. Belton overruled them both.

  ‘The Detective Superintendent is engaged on a murder inquiry, Miss, at Bartholomew Square. As are we at this station. You’re wasting police time with these histrionics. Once you’ve calmed down and answered my questions satisfactorily, I might get in touch with McGregor. But we have a policy of first things first here.’

  ‘This is unconscionable,’ Mirabelle objected once more but it was hopeless.

  The burly constable bundled the women through the door and along the corridor that led to the cells. Wellington Road did not have separate facilities for female prisoners and she knew the cells downstairs were particularly grim.

  ‘Will you put us together, please?’ Vesta implored.

  The constable did not reply. He just kept pushing them along the stairwell. Vesta gripped Mirabelle’s hand. Her nails cut into the soft flesh of Mirabelle’s palm and tears welled in her eyes.

  ‘Are you charging us?’ said Mirabelle. ‘You can’t detain us like this if you’re not charging us with anything, surely?’

  The constable’s glance betrayed his lack of concern.

  Mirabelle made her decision. ‘All right,’ she acquiesced. She’d play his game if she had to. Vesta was clearly terrified. ‘There’s a cab driver who can vouch we were in Cambridge.’

  The man stopped. ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Cyril Fanshawe. And I have an address,’ said Mirabelle.

  ‘And the information you have for McGregor?’

  Mirabelle shook her head.

  The man laid his hand firmly on Vesta’s shoulder and pushed her towards a cell.

  ‘Mirabelle,’ Vesta squealed.

  Mirabelle interposed her body as best she could. She held up her hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘All right. All right. I fear a man called Captain Henshaw may be in danger.’

  The constable laughed loudly. ‘You can say that again. None of that is going to get you off, you know. You’re going to have to tell us everything.’

  ‘But it’s true,’ Vesta exclaimed.

  ‘I take it you haven’t read the paper?’ The constable was genuinely unimpressed. He smiled a broad unpleasant grin and twisted his hands together as if he was wringing out a wet cloth. ‘Henshaw topped himself. He jumped off the roof of his house. Last night. Hear that sound?’ He put a mocking hand to his ear. ‘That’s the sound of his poor wife trying to hush it up, poor soul.’

  ‘But he can’t be dead,’ said Mirabelle earnestly. She cursed herself silently. She’d been too slow. They’d got to him more quickly than she’d expected.

  The constable continued. Now he’d started he was eager to tell the story. ‘The wife was out playing canasta and found him on the lawn when she came home. Poor bloke shattered his gammy leg and all. The coroner’s insisting we pick up every splinter. There’d be nothing worse, would there, if you was his missus and there were bits of your dead husband on the grass. We’ve got a team up there now.’

  ‘When did Henshaw jump? Do you know the exact time?’ said Mirabelle.

  ‘While you were in Cambridge, Madam,’ he said sarcastically. ‘Some time in the early hours. Why do you think Belton was trying to ascertain your whereabouts? Let’s put you in this cell together. It’s bigger. The sergeant will get to you in an hour or two. You’re helping the police with their inquiries, that’s all. I ain’t taking your possessions or nothing.’

  ‘If you’d just let me use the telephone,’ Mirabelle tried to cut in, but the door was already closing and if the constable replied she couldn’t make out what he said, only the sound of his measured footsteps receding down the corridor.

  As Mirabelle turned, Vesta sank into the corner of the dingy cell. She covered her face with her hands and started to cry.

  Chapter 22

  All life is chance.

  At his desk at Bartholomew Square, almost two hours later, Superintendent McGregor sipped his tea. He’d been there since early doors. The Gillingham case was going nowhere, but Henshaw’s suicide had kept McGregor up late, staring at Elsie Chapman’s file. The connection between Mrs Chapman and Joey Gillingham was tenuous but the dead woman’s connection to Henshaw was easier to define. Like the team at McGuigan and McGuigan, he had deduced a long-term affair and an illegitimate child. Still, it seemed, somehow, too cut and dried for his liking.

  The night before, when he finally went home, sleep had evaded him so he got up, dressed in the half-light of dawn and dragged himself back into the station where he sat at his desk trying to piece things together. He’d come to the conclusion that too many pieces of this puzzle were missing and the pieces he had, though they certainly tied up into a nice neat parcel, somehow felt unsatisfying. He was missing too many motives and far too much background information. To say that the masons were secretive was an understatement and, for that matter, discretion was a byword for anyone who might know anything useful at the track. With Henshaw’s suicide, the case was panning out to look depressingly domestic, though if he could figure out how Joey Gillingham fitted in that might change. McGregor’s instinct told him that all three deaths were interconnected, but none of the evidence seemed to point that way. Except for Mirabelle’s convictions, and they counted for something. Increasingly these days he found himself wondering what Mirabelle would think.

  McGregor read Gillingham’s file one more time. When he stayed in Brighton, Gillingham had roomed in a small boarding house on Tillstone Street that was convenient for the racetrack and the boxing club. The proprietor had no connection to Elsie Chapman, the racecourse or the boxing and by his own account was not a mason.

  ‘I follow the football,’ the man had said, trying to be helpful.

  ‘What’s on the slate today, Sir?’ Robinson asked cheerily as he breezed into the office at nine.

  McGregor looked up. The fact that Henshaw had died on Wellington Road’s patch was obviously set to make things difficult. The fact that the old man was a mason was going to make it even more so. Perhaps, McGregor reasoned, Robinson might be able to help with that, though whether he intended to
or not was another matter. He decided to apply some pressure.

  ‘Sit down.’ McGregor motioned towards the vacant chair on the opposite side of his desk.

  Robinson looked perplexed. The Superintendent was not in the habit of inviting him to the table. He bobbed nervously. ‘Sir,’ he said, putting a hand on the back of the chair.

  ‘Sit,’ barked McGregor.

  Robinson looked at the desk as if it might be booby-trapped. He glanced at the door, hoping for rescue. None came, so he sat down, crossed his legs and then uncrossed them.

  ‘You heard what happened last night?’ McGregor checked.

  Robinson nodded. ‘It ties it all up, doesn’t it?’ The inspector sounded positively cheery, or hopeful at least. ‘Elsie Chapman, I mean. It sounds like old Henshaw took her death hard. So, that’s that.’

  McGregor put his hand to his chin. His eyes flashed. ‘No, Robinson, it’s not. It’s far too tidy is what it is. You knew Captain Henshaw, I assume?’

  ‘Yes, but . . .’

  ‘Good. Did you know about this affair of his? When he was alive.’

  ‘No, Sir.’ Robinson’s voice was flat. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Did Captain Henshaw seem the type to you?’

  ‘The type?’

  ‘Suicide risk? Murderer?’

  Robinson’s eyes sought out his shoes. ‘No, Sir. Not exactly.’

  ‘He was some kind of office holder, wasn’t he?’

  ‘I couldn’t possibly say, Sir.’

  McGregor leaned over the desk. He realised his accent made it easier to sound threatening. The English, at heart, were nervous of the Scots. He suppressed a smile. A lad from Davidson’s Mains was considered soft at home but exported to England he became a hard man. McGregor wondered what the inspector would make of a real Scottish tough nut, should he ever come across one. In the meantime, he thought, he’d have to do. He kept his voice steady and low. ‘I swear to God, Robinson, if this membership of yours impairs my investigation I’ll have you demoted. Masons or no masons. I’m not asking what the poor bugger did in this little club of yours, I’m asking about his status, that’s all. Now, Brother Henshaw – some kind of office holder? Long term?’