The Architect of Murder

by Rafe McGregor

  “Do you have an appointment, sir?”

  “Mr Marshall will see me.” I reached inside my coat.

  “I’m afraid Mr Marshall doesn’t receive visitors without prior — ”

  I thrust my card at him. “Present this to Mr Marshall.” As he took it, I strode inside. “And be quick about it. I shall wait in the hall.”

  He moved deftly out my way, closed the door behind me, and hesitated. He watched me place my hat on the stand, examined the card, and made up his mind. “One moment, please, Inspector Marshall.” He disappeared up the stairs.

  The only visiting cards I had were old ones identifying me as an inspector in the Durban Borough Police, in which I’d served until the war began. I looked around as I waited, noting the tasteful luxury. The house, like my father’s new wife, had been acquired since my departure. I’d been born in Singapore, but we’d lived in the west end of Glasgow for most of my childhood. I attended Westminster as a boarder, and it was thus from London that I’d left for Bechuanaland. Four years later, Henry Marshall moved to London to look after his business interests, which had progressed from entrepôt trading and shipping to investment banking. I’d always known he was well-heeled, but it seemed he had prospered unreservedly in my absence.

  The butler trotted down the stairs, requested that I follow him, and led me back up. He stopped at a heavy oak door on the first floor, and announced me. I entered my father’s study and saw him for the first time in eleven years. He was standing next to the fireplace, hands clasped behind his back, contemplating a photograph of him shaking hands with the captain of the Thermopylae, one of the fastest tea clippers of its time.

  My father was fifty-seven and he had not aged well. He’d abandoned his mutton-chop whiskers for a more fashionable moustache, twirled at each end. Like his hair, it had been dyed dark brown. The lines in his face were much deeper than at our last meeting, and his waistline much expanded, giving him a corpulent aspect.

  I walked over to him.

  He kept his hands behind his back and scowled. “The Devil take you, what do you mean by coming here unannounced!” He had been taller than me, but middle age had shrunk him, and he squinted up at my five feet and ten inches. I noticed his accent had changed; there was no trace of Scotland left.

  I didn’t answer.

  He lashed out with his left hand, waving my card under my nose. “An inspector! Pah! An inspector in some godforsaken colonial police force that no one gives a damn about? Pathetic.” He cast it into the empty grate. “I had a commission arranged for you in the Scots Greys. The Royal Scots Greys! But you threw that in my face, like everything else. Now what the hell has caused you to darken my door after a decade? State your business, or get out and don’t return.”

  “What happened to Ellen?”

  “How would that be any of your concern? When you decided to go to Africa you severed all ties with this household. You turned your back on your family. You ceased to be my son.”

  “No, I turned my back on you. Mother was already dead and Ellen and I corresponded regularly. You prevented her from visiting me, but as soon as she had means of her own, she did.”

  “Means? Means!” he spat. “Yes, like you she also turned her back on me. Took her inheritance and squandered it on that bloody monstrosity in Sussex Place and a year’s travel. A woman — on her own — opprobrious conduct. But she’d already showed her true colours when she decided to become a veterinary surgeon. The shame of it!”

  “The shame; to earn her own wages in an honoured profession rather than eke out a meagre existence as some,” I regarded the room around us, “cut-throat plutocrat’s wife.” He started forward. I thought he was going to strike me, but I held my ground. “I ask you again, what happened to Ellen?”

  His anger vanished. “When she moved into her house, I had little to do with her. She’d visit here each month out of courtesy, but that was all. I was informed by a grubby policeman that she had fallen off her horse while riding in Regent’s Park. She broke her neck.” He shrugged. “She left money for her own funeral arrangements, and appointed you as her executor. You weren’t here, as usual, so I arranged for her burial in St James’ Church. Her solicitors are seeing to the rest. That is all.” His eyes were focused on some point in the distance, or perhaps nowhere at all.

  “Was there an inquest?” I asked.

  “An inquest? Yes, there was.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Why!” The vehemence returned as quickly as it had abated. “What the devil has it got to do with you! Do you think you can barge in here, some trumped up police official from the back of beyond, and question my actions? I treat my children properly, even if they don’t return the compliment.”

  “What about me?”

  “You are no longer my son! You call me a cut-throat plutocrat as if it were something to be ashamed of. I am a plutocrat, and I am proud of it. You should be proud of it. Thirty years ago I cut loose of the civil service and risked everything I had as an entrepreneur. When you were born I was working sixteen hours a day, seven days a week, just to stay in business. I built my company from nothing to one of the most successful on the Clydebank. I built it with my own sweat and toil. I made enough money to send you to one of the foremost schools in England, and your sister to the University of Glasgow, even if it was against my wishes.

  “Now — now — ” thick spittle formed at the corner of his mouth, “do you know who my last visitor was? The Earl of Rosebery. Yes, that’s right, the former Prime Minister. He is a neighbour of mine and I am honoured to receive him as my guest from time to time. This house! Do you know who lived here? Baron Clive of Plassey. Clive of India, one of the Empire’s greatest heroes. All of this I made on my own. And when I give you a firm foundation, what do you do with it? What have you done with your life? You’re a disgrace.”

  I swallowed my anger and pride, and spoke as evenly as I could. “What about Lieutenant Carey, have you spoken to him?”

  “Why the bloody hell would I speak to him? It’s the coroner’s job to ask damn fool questions, not mine. I don’t pay taxes so I can do some idle functionary’s job for him! Now get out.” He walked over to his desk, limping and stooped, and pressed a buzzer.

  I stared at him for three seconds, turned, and left. The butler was on his way up the stairs with two footmen. I cut through them, grabbed my hat, and slammed the door behind me.

  I marched out into Berkeley Square as thunder rumbled overhead, but it was silent tears — not the rain — that wet my face. As much as I despised him, there was still a small part of me that wanted to please my father and win his approval. In the moments he’d spoken of Ellen’s death, I’d had a vague memory of some happier time, before the indifference and the spite. I thought of Ellen, my dear sister, and how I hadn’t seen her until she’d come out to Natal in ’ninety-nine. It was the second time I’d been called a disgrace today, and my father and Miss Paterson were right. I could’ve returned to visit Ellen, even if I’d been determined never to set foot in my father’s house again. If only I’d known our future together was to be so short…

  Now Ellen was gone and I was too late.

  I tried not to think about my father, or my failings, as I walked back to Piccadilly. The only thing I could do for Ellen now was find out what had really happened. Even though I reckoned Miss Paterson was seeking some sort of natural justice or emotional closure that didn’t exist, I owed it to her and Ellen to discover the truth. I was soaked through by the time I reached the Windsor.

  There were no messages for me, so I bathed, dressed, and fixed upon a plan of action for the evening. I took a table as soon as the hotel restaurant opened at six-thirty, and decided to restrict myself to three courses. The waiter had just placed the first in front of me when a big, muscular man burst into the dining-room. He was clean-shaven with a long, thin scar that began above his left eye, and cut diagonally through the eyebrow to the bridge of his nose. It was clearly from a knife. He hadn’t bothered
to remove his brown bowler hat. His eyes scoured the room until they settled on me. At that instant one of the attendants accosted him, but he shrugged the man off and made directly for my table. As he came closer I noticed a piece of his right ear was missing, bitten off by the look of the jagged outline.

  I put down my knife and fork, dabbed my moustache with my napkin, and pushed my chair back a little. “May I help you, sir?”

  “Major Marshall?”

  “I am.”

  “Come with me.” It was an order, not a request.

  “You’re from Scotland Yard?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. We just found Lowenstein. He’s dead. Someone bashed his head in.”

  4. Murder in Bohemia

  “Don’t spare the horse this time,” the detective snarled at the driver as we climbed aboard the cab.

  We set off.

  “You have me at a disadvantage, sir.”

  “Name’s Truegood. Let’s cut the chaff, Major. I don’t care if you are a war hero, I don’t want you getting in my way any more than I want a case of Cupid’s. Mr M told me you’re on the payroll and said to take you, so that’s what I’m doing.”

  Offensive as he was, I had little to gain from aggravating him. “You’re one of Superintendent Melville’s inspectors?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Where was Lowenstein found?”

  “A lodging-house in Tottenham Street.”

  “Where’s that?” I asked.

  “I thought you were supposed to have lived in London? Near Fitzroy Square. The area is full of Chartists, anarchists, a few harmless socialists — our very own Bohemia.”

  “When was his body found?”

  “Five o’clock. You going to ask questions all the way?”

  I was not. I took out my watch and calculated that we had less than two hours of daylight left. Even if the premises had electric lighting, natural light is always preferable when conducting a minute examination. The traffic thinned out after we left Leicester Square, we made good progress up Charing Cross, and then drove along soot-stained Tottenham Court Road. The driver took the next left after Goodge Street, and pulled up outside 18 Tottenham Street, a third-rate Georgian terraced house next to a tobacconist’s. A uniformed police constable was standing sentry, and the front door was open.

  Truegood alighted from the cab with a Gladstone bag, dismissed the driver, and acknowledged the constable’s salute with a grunt. He led the way into a cramped entrance hall which had barely enough space for a narrow flight of stairs and a passage between two interior doors. He halted and bellowed, “Sergeant Aitken!”

  “Inspector Truegood, sir? Up here, sir; upstairs, right to the top.” A face appeared briefly over the banister above.

  We ascended the three flights of stairs to the third floor, where Aitken, a clean-shaven man with a scarred chin, waited with another uniformed constable. “Evening, sir. I’m Sergeant Aitken, D Division CID. The deceased were lodging under the name Otto Isaacs, but I found these documents indicating otherwise.” He pulled a sheaf of folded papers from his coat pocket. “They was — ”

  Truegood snatched them from him. “I suppose you and your constables have been tramping all over the scene like a herd of bloody great elephants!”

  “No, sir! Constable Smith secured the room as soon as he established Lowenstein were dead. I had a quick look, but as soon as I found those documents and saw the name, I sent for the Yard — and the police surgeon.”

  “Who else lives here?” Truegood asked as he leafed through the papers. I noted he touched each one in exactly the same place.

  “The landlady and her daughter, and a Russian couple. They’re all in their rooms waiting for you, and I’ve got a constable at the front and back to make sure no one comes or goes.”

  Truegood knelt and opened the Gladstone. One of the compartments held envelopes and folded paper bags of various sizes; he placed the documents in another, which was empty. “Where were these?”

  “In the bedroom, sir. Under the lifted floorboard. You can’t miss it.”

  Truegood closed the bag, and stood. “You just told me you hadn’t disturbed the scene of the offence.”

  “I haven’t, sir, the floorboard were like that when I found it.”

  “The body was discovered at five o’clock?”

  “Just after, sir.”

  “Right. Go keep an eye on these witnesses for me. This is Major Marshall, a private agent. Collins should be here shortly. Show him up as soon as he arrives.”

  “Yes, sir.” Aitken and the constable left us.

  “Don’t touch anything,” growled Truegood as we entered the sitting-room.

  The chamber was about fifteen feet square, sparsely furnished and ill-maintained. A man lay prone on the floor between a sofa and an upended kneehole table. His right temple had been smashed with a heavy, blunt object. The grey clay of his brain was visible where it had been pierced with bloody splinters from his skull. Thick, cranial blood was mixed with clear cerebrospinal fluid in his hair, down his right cheek, and had formed a dried pool on the rug beneath him.

  Truegood put his bag and hat on the sideboard and glanced around the room, as if fixing the co-ordinates of a map in his mind. Then he walked over to the body and knelt down next to it, careful to avoid the blood. “Right, we’re going to turn him over — that way, away from the claret. Hold on a minute!” He produced a piece of chalk and carefully marked four places on the floor: the top of Lowenstein’s head, Lowenstein’s left shoulder, and the two points where the table touched the ground. When he’d finished, he moved the table away.

  We rolled Lowenstein onto his back. His body was cold to the touch and he was as rigid as the floorboards. As we set him down his right eyeball swung free from its socket. It appeared he had been struck at least twice, and one of the blows had dislodged his eye. The eyeball hung on his right cheek, an inch of optic nerve connecting the bulb to the bloody hole. It looked as if a parasite had thrust its way out from his brain to feed on the blood covering his face. Lowenstein was a tall, emaciated young man in his late twenties. He was dressed in his shirtsleeves, without a collar attached. His clothes and shoes were of the finest quality, but worn and dirty.

  Truegood began searching his pockets. Without looking up at me he asked, “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Sketching the scene of the offence,” I replied, pencil and notebook in hand. “Don’t be prancing about yet, there’s been enough of that already.”

  “I won’t. I’ll estimate.”

  He grunted, withdrew a magnifying glass from inside his coat, and began a minute examination of the corpse. I was impressed. The quality of detection still varied greatly throughout the Empire police forces, and I hadn’t been sure what to expect. In Pitsani I’d been largely left to my own devices, but with the assistance of Drayton, had read as widely as possible in the field of medical jurisprudence. When I’d moved to Durban, I’d found Superintendent Alexander a thorough and meticulous detective who’d refined the lessons I’d learned from Dr Gross’ Criminal Investigation. I’d lost touch with developments during the war, although I’d heard that Francis Galton’s Finger Prints was being regarded with new respect.

  While Truegood scrutinised Lowenstein’s mortal remains, I continued my sketch and reflected on what I knew of the deceased. Eric Lowenstein was a confidential clerk with Wernher, Beit & Co, in Cape Town. He was a trusted employee of the director, Alfred Beit, one of the South African ‘goldbugs’. Beit had been a business partner of Rhodes, a joint director of the British South Africa Company, De Beers, Rand Mines and various other enterprises. Like Rhodes, he had suffered a temporary setback in his fortunes when he was implicated in the Jameson Raid, but was still a powerful and influential individual; even more so, now that Rhodes was dead. Lowenstein was one of the two witnesses to the last amendment Rhodes had made to his will in March. He had returned to London in April, and was reported missing several weeks later.

  Tru
egood finished examining the body, and began moving around it in an ever-increasing radius.

  “Do you want me to start searching?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  I removed my hat and coat, and rolled up my sleeves. Beginning with the bedroom door, I moved around the walls and furniture in an anti-clockwise direction. A wing chair with arms rubbed smooth sat in a corner. There was only one other chair in the room, under a scratched old dining table which obviously doubled as a writing desk. It wasn’t difficult to deduce that Lowenstein hadn’t received many — or any — callers. I looked back at the body. For someone who’d just spent several years in the Cape Colony, his skin was very pale. I wondered how often he’d left his rooms. I found eight cigarette butts in the fireplace, all of the same type. I continued around to the tortoise stove and the windows. The drapes were pulled open, but the windows fastened down with hasps. I scrutinised the table, chair, and gas-lamp. Underneath the table there was a large stack of old newspapers. They were all halfpenny Daily Mails, every issue from yesterday right back to the sixth of May.

  Truegood was at the sideboard.

  “Anything?” I asked.

  “Some hairs, fibres. Probably belong to Lowenstein.” He jerked his head towards the other room.

  I retrieved my notebook and pencil, and followed.

  The bedchamber was just over half the size of the sitting-room, and also without a carpet. Other than the bed there was a single chest of drawers, a wardrobe and a washstand. All four items were in a state of disrepair. In between the bed and the wardrobe part of a floorboard had been lifted, and in the cavity beneath was a large quantity of coins and notes. Lowenstein’s pocket-watch, gold-plated, lay on top of the chest of drawers. Truegood knelt to examine the money, but didn’t touch it. He pulled an empty chamber pot from under the bed. Then he opened the wardrobe to reveal a brown morning coat and waistcoat that matched the trousers Lowenstein was wearing, a creased white shirt and an empty portmanteau. The chest of drawers contained two night-shirts, a few toiletries and a half-full carton of cigarettes. They were ready-made, but cheap, the same as those in the grate.