The hall stretched the height of the house. A dark-stained pine staircase rose into the gloom. As Thornhill breathed out, his breath condensed in the still air. Major Harcutt looped the dog’s lead around the newel post at the bottom of the stairs. On the floor beside the post was the bottom half of a tarnished silver soup tureen filled with water, with a khaki blanket in a heap next to it.
‘Sit,’ Harcutt snapped.
The dog stared at him.
The major smacked the dog’s nose. ‘Sit, miss! Sit, I say!’
The dog slowly lowered its hind legs until it was almost, but not quite, sitting on the blanket. Its baleful eyes swung back to Thornhill.
‘Good dog. Good Milly.’
The major set off down a passage on the left of the hall. Thornhill kept his overcoat on because Harcutt had made no move to take it. As he trudged across the tiled floor after his host, he felt sand or grit beneath his shoes.
‘Can’t beat a dog, eh? She’s my daughter’s, actually. Know where you are with dogs.’
Harcutt turned right under an archway. The tiles gave way to linoleum. He opened a door and, again without a backward glance, went into the room beyond. Thornhill found himself on the threshold of a square, low-ceilinged room which was a little less cold than the hall. A high-backed sofa had been drawn close to the fireplace. With a shock, Thornhill realised that Major Harcutt had company.
As he came into the room, the heads of two women turned towards the doorway. Two pairs of eyes stared at him over the back of the sofa.
‘Ah – Inspector Thornhill,’ said Mrs Wemyss-Brown; she was wearing a hat and what any well-trained CID officer would have recognised as a mink coat. ‘We were only just in time.’
The other woman said nothing. She looked gravely at Thornhill.
‘Good morning, Mrs Wemyss-Brown.’ He struggled to remember the other woman’s name; the brief lapse of memory flustered him.
‘And – and Miss Francis. I hope I haven’t called at a bad moment. I could always come back another day. I tried to telephone ahead but—’
‘But, of course, Major Harcutt isn’t on the phone.’ Mrs Wemyss-Brown interposed smoothly. ‘That’s why we’re here.’ She flashed a smile at Harcutt who by now was standing over the gas fire and trying to warm his hands. ‘Having set the police on to you, Jack, it seemed the least we could do was to let you know.’
‘That’s all right,’ Harcutt said ambiguously; he smoothed his moustache and stared at the floor.
Thornhill turned his hat between his hands. Jill Francis was still looking at him. Not staring – she wasn’t that sort of woman – but he knew her attention was on him; no doubt she was wondering whether he always acted so gauchely.
‘Well,’ he said to no one in particular. ‘If you’re sure it wouldn’t be inconvenient?’
‘Not at all, Inspector.’ Mrs Wemyss-Brown beamed at him, taking his words to herself. She stood up amid creaks and rustles. ‘We must be getting back. We were on the verge of leaving when you arrived.’
Jill Francis followed suit. Last night, Thornhill hadn’t realised what lovely eyes she had. Still, they didn’t make up for the fact that she was so remote and arrogant. Not that it mattered. Neither her personality nor her appearance had anything to do with him.
The two women moved towards the doorway. Harcutt detached himself from the gas fire and followed them.
‘Goodbye, Inspector,’ Mrs Wemyss-Brown said, inclining her head towards him. The coat came down to her thick calves. Her perfume swept over him.
He mumbled goodbye. His attention was on Jill Francis, who gave him what he thought was a very cold, small smile, the bare minimum that civility required. She said nothing to him, nor did he to her.
He heard Mrs Wemyss-Brown talking to Major Harcutt as the three of them walked down the hall: ‘You must come and have a bite of lunch with us, Jack. It’s been ages since we had you at Troy House.’
The major muttered something indistinguishable in reply. The dog gave an experimental yap.
Harcutt yelled, ‘Sit down, miss!’
Thornhill stuffed his hands deep into the pockets of his overcoat and wandered towards the window which overlooked a cobbled yard and part of a high stone wall. An archway in the wall gave a view of the garden, a sunlit wilderness. He would have liked to throw open the window and let in the pale winter sunlight and the fresh, cold air.
He walked up and down, partly to keep himself warm, and partly to get an idea of the major from his belongings. The room smelt like a spit-and-sawdust bar in a pub – of tobacco, stale alcohol and unwashed bodies. It seemed smaller than it was because it was crowded with furniture – a large dining table covered with papers, chairs, a large bureau which was probably eighteenth century, two sofas and several tall, glass-fronted bookcases. Apart from the gas fire, there appeared to be no form of heating. It was possible that Harcutt slept in here as well: there was a nest of grubby blankets and eiderdowns on the other sofa. Horsehair was oozing out of the armchair closest to the fire. One wall was brown with damp and the plaster near the ceiling was beginning to lift off. The tiled surround in front of the fireplace was littered with ash and cigarette ends. There were dog hairs everywhere.
Perhaps this had once been the housekeeper’s room. That would explain why the furniture looked so out of scale – Harcutt would have brought in pieces from the main reception rooms. Thornhill glanced at the bureau. It was closed, but on top of it was a tray of poppies and a collecting tin. There was a difference, he told himself to salve his conscience, between active eavesdropping or prying on the one hand and merely being observant on the other.
A Second Empire clock, its hands at ten to seven, gathered dust on the mantelpiece. Beside it, in a battered silver frame, was a photograph showing a much younger, pipe-smoking Harcutt with his left arm round a stout woman and his right arm round a little girl with a pigtail dangling across her chest. They were standing like a row of dolls along the wooden railing of a verandah with the light behind them and their faces in shadow. All three of them were smiling, but there was something curiously rigid about their pose. Though the photograph was obviously a snapshot, and not a very good one at that, it had a formal quality.
There was movement in the hall and Thornhill turned quickly towards the door as Harcutt bustled into the room. He had a sense of purpose about him which had not been there before.
‘Phew. Thought she’d never go.’ Harcutt moved towards the bureau which stood against the wall to the right of the fireplace. ‘Later than I thought.’ He glanced at his watch, as if to verify this. ‘Care for a drink? I usually have a spot of something before lunch myself.’
‘Not for me, thank you, sir.’
‘Oh, yes, of course. Mustn’t corrupt the constabulary.’ The major’s surliness had vanished. He rubbed his hands together. ‘I find it helps the digestion. Gives one an appetite.’
With sudden urgency, he opened the flap of the bureau, revealing a mass of old newspapers, files and letters. He reached behind the pile and brought out a bottle and a glass. The glass already contained half an inch of whisky. Thornhill turned away and pretended to study the photograph on the mantelpiece. He heard the chink of glass against glass and the gurgle of liquid spurting from the bottle.
‘Ah, that’s better.’ Harcutt came to stand by the fire. ‘Do sit down, my dear fellow. I’d keep your coat on if I were you.’
Thornhill sat on the sofa, in the place where Jill Francis had been sitting. Harcutt turned up the gas and the fire hissed as the flames rose higher. That was one advantage of being so near the road, Thornhill thought: the gas company must have extended the gas main to Edge Hill when the semidetached houses had crept along the fields from Lydmouth.
‘We’ve got a problem with the central heating,’ Harcutt went on. ‘Something to do with the boiler, I understand. The engineers seem to take an age to sort it out. Costs an arm and a leg too. It’s all the same these days. They don’t care what sort of a job they do, they just w
ant your money. And the more the better.’
He swallowed another mouthful of whisky and wiped his moustache with the back of his hand.
‘It’s not like the army, you know. In the old days, I’d just get on the phone and someone would have been round in a jiffy. When I was in Egypt, I remember old . . .’
With the skill born of long practice, Thornhill gently slipped an interruption into the flow of words: ‘I understand you know a lot about Victorian Lydmouth, sir.’
‘Yes.’ The major blinked, needing a few seconds to adjust to the change of subject. He took another sip of whisky. ‘Yes, Charlotte told me you want to pick my brains about those bones.’ His pale, red-rimmed eyes glanced down at Thornhill and back to the glass in his hand; the action was natural enough, but the speed with which it was accomplished gave it a furtive air. ‘I asked her where they’d been found, and when she said the Rose in Hand I said to myself, “Ah, I know what that means.”’
‘Indeed? What does it mean?’
‘Sounds remarkably like the apprentice work of Amelia Rushwick.’
Thornhill took out his notebook. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to make allowances for my ignorance, sir.’
‘Eh? Not a local man, are you? Where do you come from?’
‘Cambridgeshire. But my wife has local connections.’
‘Very glad to hear it. I’m all for people staying where they belong. Roots, you know, whatever people say, they’re important. Yes, well – be that as it may. Where was I?’
‘Amelia Rushwick, sir.’
‘Let me see. Give me a moment to get my thoughts straight.’
The major swallowed some more neat whisky. He shook a cigarette out of the packet on the mantelpiece and lit it with a spill. He sat down in the armchair closest to the fire.
Thornhill wondered how soon he could decently get away. It was unlikely that this old soak was going to be able to tell him anything useful. But the signs were that Harcutt would spin out the interview as long as possible, just for the company. No wonder Mrs Wemyss-Brown hadn’t invited him to Troy House recently.
‘Did you know that the Rose in Hand was quite a prosperous place once upon a time?’
Thornhill nodded.
‘Went downhill in the nineteenth century. By the 1880s it had a very bad reputation indeed, and that’s when the Rushwicks leased it. Can’t tell you the dates offhand – I’ll check them if you want – but I think their tenancy began in about 1884 and lasted until 1891. In those days the site was owned by the Ruispidge Estate. Of course, that doesn’t mean the Rushwicks didn’t sublet it. Under the counter, as it were. Difficult to keep track of things when you’re trying to pin down that class of person, I find – don’t leave many records, you see. Where was I? Yes, the Rose. It had a bit of a reputation. Haunt of vice, you know the sort of thing. Now, the Rushwicks’ eldest daughter was called Amelia. Amelia Rushwick: name mean anything to you?’
‘No, sir.’
Major Harcutt looked around. He lowered his voice and leant forward: ‘Sex mad.’
He leant back to watch the effect of his words on his visitor. Thornhill merely looked expectantly at him. Harcutt swallowed twice and smoothed his moustache.
‘She was born in 1870,’ he went on, speaking more rapidly than before. ‘Grew up in Lydmouth, must have lived with her parents at the Rose in Hand. Then she went off to London in the late eighties – almost certainly with a man. Once she got there, she found her own level soon enough. Afterwards, when she was arrested, her parents claimed they’d thrown her out of the Rose. But they would, wouldn’t they? If you ask me it was a case of the pot calling the kettle black.’
Harcutt fell silent. He dabbed at his lips, looking first at the empty glass and then at the bureau where the bottle stood beside the tray of poppies.
‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘there were only two things Amelia could do and she did them both. She became a part-time barmaid and part-time prostitute. More the latter than the former, I’ll be bound. Saw women like that when I was in the army sometimes. All ages, all sorts and conditions, too – colonel’s lady or Judy O’Grady – natural tarts.’
He sucked in his cheeks and turned the glass round in his hands. His watery eyes stared into the past and seemed to find it fascinating.
‘What happened next?’ Thornhill asked.
‘She met this man Ferrano. Half-Italian. Sold ice cream, I shouldn’t wonder. Anyway you know what these wops are like. Amelia fell in love with him, or so she claimed. Then Ferrano said he was going back to Italy. And Amelia said she wanted to go too. Trouble was, she had twins by a previous liaison. She had them fostered most of the time, but that cost money. They were about three years old. Ferrano said they couldn’t come back to Italy, oh, no. He put his foot down. Didn’t want someone else’s little bastards in tow. Got plenty of his own, no doubt.’ The major’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. ‘So she smothered them. Poor little beggars.’
‘She smothered her own children?’
‘Yes – that’s what I’m telling you. Just to be with this Italian fancy man of hers. Makes your blood run cold, doesn’t it?’
Harcutt struggled to his feet, scattering cigarette ash on the carpet. His face was much redder than it had been before. Supporting himself with one hand first on the mantelpiece and then on the wall, he made his way towards the bureau.
‘Sure you won’t join me?’
‘No, thank you, sir.’
Harcutt sat down heavily on the chair in front of the bureau. With great deliberation he refilled his glass and took another sip. ‘You could understand a foreigner doing that sort of thing but not a British girl. She told everyone she’d packed them off to another foster home. But the landlady got suspicious. They were behind with the rent. There’d been words. Anyway the landlady complained to the police, and they finally dug up the garden. And there were the children. Still in their nightgowns.’
‘This must have made quite a stir at the time. Do you know of an account of the case I could look up?’
‘Any amount of them.’ Harcutt picked up the bottle and studied the label. ‘You know the Notable British Trials series? It’s in there. I’ll find you the reference before you go.’
Thornhill felt sorry for Amelia, sorrier for her children. He wondered whether Ferrano had pulled the strings. And talking of strings: ‘What happened to her?’
‘Oh, she was hanged, of course. Last thing she said on the scaffold was that Ferrano had nothing to do with it. Ferrano was a witness for the prosecution, would you believe. Even so, there she was, ready to meet her Maker, and she was still so besotted with the man that she wanted to do her best by him. Extraordinary, isn’t it?’
‘It is extraordinary.’
Thornhill scribbled in his notebook. Major Harcutt cleared his throat so vigorously that the phlegm rattled in his chest. Absently he uncorked the bottle and refreshed his glass. His method of imparting information had been idiosyncratic, but he’d provided plenty of material. Presumably, too, he would not have had time to look up the case because Mrs Wemyss-Brown had only just told him about the bones found at the Rose in Hand.
‘You’ve got an impressive memory, sir.’
‘Eh? Oh, I looked into the case a few months ago for my book. Did I tell you I’m writing a book? The history of Lydmouth in the nineteenth century. Fascinating. Let me see if I can get you the reference.’
Harcutt put down his glass, opened a drawer and pulled out a file. He flicked through its contents, grunting impatiently as he failed to find what he wanted.
Thornhill thought about the nature of Amelia Rushwick’s relationship with Ferrano. If Harcutt’s version of the facts was accurate, she must have loved him with an intensity that most people only read about – either that or she had been mad. How had Ferrano felt about being the object of such overwhelming devotion? Thornhill wondered whether the twins had felt pain and whether death was in fact preferable to life for children in their situation in the slums of Victorian London.
Superintendent Williamson was going to be very unhappy about the CID wasting their time on a possible victim of a Victorian murderer.
‘Here we are, Inspector. Notable British Trials, volume 49, edited by Harry Hodge and published in London. They’ve got a copy in the library in town. Not on the open shelves, of course. You have to ask for it.’
Thornhill took down the details. He shut his notebook and stood up. ‘This has been very useful, sir. I don’t think I need take up any more of your time.’
‘It might not have been Amelia’s baby,’ Harcutt went on, the muscles in his cheeks making chewing motions as he spoke. ‘Mustn’t jump to conclusions. In those days there were an awful lot of unmarried mothers in the working classes. Barely better than animals, some of them. I imagine a lot of them disposed of their young in what we would consider a rather unorthodox way.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Thornhill put the notebook in his overcoat and picked up his hat from the sofa.
‘The Rose in Hand is just the place you’d expect them to do it, too. Lot of people coming and going. Sort of place where I imagine you didn’t ask too many questions. Still, it is tempting to think of it as Amelia’s. There’s a certain neatness to it.’
‘Quite.’
‘Might be a footnote for my book in this. Tell me, was anything else found with – ah – the bones? Something that might help identify where they came from? Or when, of course. If you could pin it down to the late eighties, for example, you’d strengthen the theory.’
Thornhill took his first tentative step towards the door. ‘I should have made clear from the start that we’re not even absolutely sure that they are human bones. We should have a laboratory report within a day or two. But Dr Bayswater thinks it very possible that they are.’
‘Ah, Bayswater.’ The major sniffed. ‘He’s my doctor.’
‘The site had been rather disturbed. Rats had got in. After all, it was originally a privy.’ Thornhill watched the major’s face and saw the skin puckering horizontally along the forehead. He wondered whether the old man were wincing. He thought probably not. ‘We only have a few bones. We also found a scrap of newspaper and a brooch.’
An Air That Kills Page 8
