The Murder Book

by Jane A. Adams

  ‘I felt sorry for her. She’d had a really bad time what with that Mrs Fry dying and leaving her money that she then couldn’t get and all the trouble that came from it. So I carried on looking after Ruby, from time to time, but I told her it would have to stop. Told I couldn’t keep on doing it.’

  ‘And eventually, when did you stop?’

  Phyllis took a deep breath. ‘When things … things I couldn’t … things I couldn’t approve started happening. I mean, I turn a blind eye to a lot of things because I know how hard it is for people like Mary Fields and for little Ruby. And if you want to know the truth, I did love that little girl. But Mary was getting in … getting into things she didn’t ought to have done. I mean, apart from the obvious.’

  ‘What kind of things? Phyllis, I know this is hard but it’s really important. Mary and Ruby are dead and so is Walter, their cousin. We think somebody should pay for that, don’t you?’

  Phyllis nodded. ‘Look, I don’t want to make it sound as though I’m passing judgement on a dead woman but I think she brought some of it on herself. Mary thought she was cleverer than she really was and she got Walter involved. And she should not have done that, not a young man like that.’

  ‘Involved in what?’ Henry asked, but he suspected that Phyllis was set on telling the tale in her own time and he was not going to be able to hurry it along.

  There was a pause in the conversation as the housekeeper brought the tea and set it down on a little table. She glanced at the three of them and then withdrew but Henry didn’t think she would go far. He hoped she was as discreet as Dr Fielding reckoned her to be.

  Mickey got up. ‘Shall I be mother?’ he said. ‘Sugar, is it, Mrs Miles?’

  ‘Oh, yes, one, please.’ She watched Mickey intently and then settled herself with a cup and saucer, declining the offer of biscuits.

  ‘You were saying that Mary had got involved in something deeper,’ Henry prompted.

  Phyllis took another deep breath; it seemed she had to be well oxygenated if she was to tell her story effectively. ‘You know perhaps about old Mrs Fry, about her leaving some money. And about the grandson saying that shouldn’t have happened and about Mr May, his business partner, making sure that it did.’

  Henry nodded. Mickey had sat back down again and was helping himself to biscuits.

  ‘Well, she told me that she’d got herself involved with this Mr May. That she was seeing him, regular like, going away overnight sometimes. And him booking a hotel.’

  Henry nodded in what he hoped was an encouraging manner. That fitted with what had been rumoured; that May had made approaches to Mary and that George Fields had been under the impression that she had rejected him. Or perhaps that was just what he wanted to think.

  ‘And how long ago was this?’ Henry asked.

  ‘A year or more ago, it started. She said she’d been helping out at a party somewhere. She said they put them all in these black uniforms with frilly white aprons and frilly little caps. She said they were all drinking champagne. I don’t mean the servants, of course, but she said the guests were all drinking champagne for hours. Dancing on the tables, they were.’

  ‘And Mr May was there?’

  ‘And his wife too.’

  ‘And this was when their … liaison started? After that?’

  ‘Soon after that, I think. But anyway, she got involved with him. She said he paid for everything when they were away and gave her some money to bring home with her. But Mary, well, she wanted more out of it. She reckoned he had enough to spare for her. She said she wanted the best for Ruby and that the likes of May didn’t deserve it anyway. She said it was his wife’s money, most of it. That his wife’s father had paid for Fry and May to set up in business or maybe it was for him to join the business or something. I don’t remember. But that’s when she had the idea, you see?’

  ‘The idea?’

  ‘And that’s when she started to involve Walter.’ She sipped her tea and looked appealingly at Henry Johnstone, as though he should draw the right conclusion and she not have to say it.

  ‘Are we talking blackmail here?’ Mickey asked, helping himself to another biscuit.

  ‘Well, yes. Like I said, she had an idea. She thought she could threaten him. Tell his wife.’

  ‘Did she have any hope that his wife would believe her?’

  ‘Of course she did. She’d have had the pictures, wouldn’t she?’

  ‘Photographs. You mean she got Walter to take photographs?’

  ‘And where would Walter get a camera from?’ Mickey asked.

  Phyllis shrugged. ‘That I don’t know. But she reckoned he could. She reckoned she could make good money out of him. I reckon she were a bloody fool, excuse my language, but a man like that isn’t going to just lie down and take it, if you see my meaning.’

  ‘And how long ago was this?’

  ‘Three, four months ago maybe. It was then that I went and talked to my mother … Again. And she was furious with me for not taking any notice of her the first time. And I told Mary then and there that I’d not be looking after Ruby for her. She needed to stop before it got too bad. She needed to think again. A man like that …’

  Phyllis Miles left soon afterwards, slipping out of the back door again and Mickey and Henry, having thanked the housekeeper for her help and impressed upon her the need for secrecy, left by the front.

  ‘This begins to make sense,’ Henry said. ‘Now we need to know if Walter managed to get the camera and if he took the pictures. If so, where are the pictures now? There was no sign of the house being searched, not that there was much to search – just a quick rummage through the drawers would have done it. So it’s possible, of course, that whoever killed Mary and the others took the photographs away.’

  ‘It draws May into the frame, though, doesn’t it? Though whether he’d do the deed himself or get someone to do it for him is a moot point.’

  ‘But he’d surely not want to admit to anyone that these photographs existed and perhaps lay himself open to further blackmail.’

  ‘Well, we don’t know that yet or whether Mary followed through with her plan. Walter may have been unable or unwilling to assist. We need to talk to George Fields again, find out where his cousin might’ve got a camera from. Or if he’d any inkling this was what his Mary was planning.’

  ‘Even if he had, he’d have put it from his mind,’ Henry said. ‘George Fields has this image of perfection in his head where his wife and child are concerned and it’s an image he’s going to be reluctant to shift from.’

  ‘Well, it’s a picture he’s going to have to redraw if we’re going to catch the man who did this.’

  ‘And now we have two possible suspects – May and Ethan Samuels. Do you favour one over the other?’

  Henry nodded slowly. ‘Yesterday,’ he said, ‘I was halfway to being convinced that the Samuels boy was responsible but now I’m drifting in the other direction. May has a lot to lose and a long way to fall.’

  George Fields was in a recalcitrant mood when they had him brought back up to the interview room. He listened in thunderous silence while Henry told him that information had been received that indicated his wife had been having an affair with Charles May and that she may even have been trying to blackmail him.

  ‘Whoever it is, they’re lying,’ George insisted. ‘I told you before – he tried it on with her and she told him where to go.’

  ‘She may have had the strength to tell him that when you were around but when you were no longer there she may have decided that what you didn’t know couldn’t hurt you.’

  George Fields shook his head and would no longer meet Henry’s gaze.

  ‘Just tell me one thing,’ Henry said. ‘Where would Walter have got a camera from?’

  George sighed deeply but it seemed that was a question he could answer. ‘We have a relative, assistant to one of the promenade photographers in Cleethorpes. It’s possible he might have got one from him.’

  Henry remember
ed the photograph that he’d found in the drawer, the one of George and Mary and Ruby taken on the promenade. He nodded. ‘Thank you, George. You can go back to your cell now.’

  The door to Carrington’s office was closed so the man must be inside, but neither Henry nor Mickey felt like disturbing him and it seemed that Carrington wanted nothing to do with them.

  ‘So what now?’ Mickey asked.

  ‘I think we leave things over until morning and then we bring Charles May in for questioning. We don’t have enough evidence to charge him with anything but we do have enough to unsettle the man.’

  Mickey nodded. ‘We going to do it quietly or with all the bells and whistles?’

  ‘I think with a full brass band if we can find one,’ Henry replied. ‘This is a man who needs to keep up appearances. It seems to me that the key to breaking him is public display.’

  ‘And if he’s innocent, we stand to ruin his reputation.’

  ‘Then we’ll offer an apology,’ Henry said.

  ‘Why wait until tomorrow?’

  ‘Because I want to find out more about him before we jump, gather what ammunition we can. If his money is really his wife’s fortune, how widely is that known? I want to go in as well armed as we can.’

  ‘Newspaper offices, then,’ Mickey guessed.

  FIFTY-ONE

  Charles May had been brought to the police station at nine o’clock the following morning. He had been escorted from his house, put into a police car and driven through the streets at a time when the town was fully awake and active and many could see. A quiet word had been dropped to the local newspapers that this was happening and that Mr Charles May was helping the police with their enquiries concerning the murder of Mrs Mary Fields and her child.

  The tipoff had been anonymous, of course, but a journalist had been on the scene ready to photograph events as Mr May was led through the front door of the police station.

  It was underhanded, of course, and Henry was under no illusions. He had little evidence against May and, if asked, would be at pains to insist the man had come voluntarily and the police car had simply been sent to pick him up as a courtesy. Actually, he would probably have left Mickey to say all that, his sergeant being a far more convincing liar than he was.

  He fully expected a hurricane of protest from Inspector Carrington when he finally arrived at work and the vilification of polite society in Louth and beyond, a prospect which, frankly, worried him not in the slightest. Henry Johnstone was never concerned about treading on corns.

  Charles May was fuming quietly. He sat in the interview room across the table from Johnstone. ‘You do realize that you will pay for this. I have influential friends who will take a very low view of me being dragged here. So I suggest we get this over and done with and I leave. I have work to attend to.’

  ‘I’m going to put it to you that you were having a relationship with Mrs Mary Fields, a relationship that was getting troublesome.’

  ‘And I put to you, that though I knew Mrs Mary Fields in a professional capacity, I had no dealings with the woman outside of that. Why would I? I have a wife, and should I want to have an affair there are many other young women willing enough. Why should I have to scrape the dregs from the barrel?’

  ‘Where were you on the night of the murder?’ Henry asked. ‘That would be the twenty-third of June.’

  Charles May began to laugh, very softly. ‘Inspector, you should have asked me this before and I could have saved you a lot of trouble. I, my wife and Mr and Mrs Fry were attending a midsummer celebration out at Willingsby Hall, in the company of perhaps sixty others. It was a big party that spilled out on to the lawn under a marquee. We took over the house, Inspector, and we danced the night away. I have many witnesses to the fact that I was there. And if you had troubled to ask me, in the privacy of my own home, I would have told you this.’

  ‘You don’t have to be present to have commissioned a murder,’ Henry Johnstone said. ‘We have reason to believe that Mrs Fields was trying to blackmail you, to reveal the details of the affair to your wife who, I believe, actually controls most of your fortune. I’d consider that a good motive.’

  Charles May’s face twisted into a look of disdain but Henry could tell that he had hit a sore spot. ‘My wife’s fortune is mine,’ Charles May said. ‘There is no difference between what I own and what her father has given to her.’

  ‘I understand you are given an allowance,’ Henry Johnstone said. ‘I understand that the bulk of your wife’s fortune will pass purely to her on her father’s death and is tied up in a trust fund that cannot be touched.’

  ‘How dare you involve yourself in my personal matters!’

  ‘It’s a matter of public knowledge,’ Henry Johnstone said. ‘My sergeants and I spent yesterday afternoon searching through the archives of the local newspapers and they had quite a lot to say about your marriage to Celia and the, some might say, unusual financial ramifications.’

  ‘Did you find the photographs?’ Mickey Hitchens asked. ‘Or were you yet disappointed?’

  ‘What photographs? There were no photographs. There was no relationship beyond my dealing with a small matter of Mrs Fry’s bequest. And believe me, it was a small matter. Fifty or a hundred pounds, I don’t remember now, but nothing significant. I could never understand why Fry made such a fuss over it. It was nothing in the greater scheme of things.’

  ‘It was to Mr and Mrs Fields, though. It was of great matter to them.’

  May gestured airily. ‘I’ve no doubt it was,’ he said. ‘And it was dealt with satisfactorily. I then had nothing more to do with the woman. To suggest that I might have had any kind of relationship with her … and I resent the idea that this might have been an affair, Inspector. People have affairs with their equals and she was certainly not that.’

  A knock on the door and the constable told them that Mr Fry was insisting that he see Mr May, his client.

  ‘So you’re a client now,’ Mickey Hitchens said. ‘Is Mr Fry also an expert in criminal law?’

  ‘You can tell Mr Fry not to fret,’ Henry Johnstone told the constable. ‘Mr May will be with him directly.’

  Henry exchanged a look with Mickey. There was nothing more to be gained from keeping Fry waiting or keeping May here. Seeds had been sown and all they could hope now was that they would take root and grow swiftly.

  Edmund Fry had his car waiting and Henry watched as the pair drove away. Carrington had arrived in time to see this event and was now demanding that Henry explain himself.

  ‘Information was received that Charles May was having an affair with Mary Fields and that she sought to blackmail him over this. Mr May therefore becomes a suspect. A legitimate suspect. And so we brought him in for questioning. I take it there are no objections.’

  Neither Inspector Johnstone nor Sergeant Hitchens waited around to see if there were. As they walked back to their lodgings, Henry confided that he was still frustrated at there being a lack of news from the dockyard police. He had arranged to borrow Dr Fielding’s car and drive back out to Thoresway. Mickey Hitchens planned to take the train up to Cleethorpes and track down the photographer and his assistant there.

  ‘What do you think May will do now?’

  Henry Johnstone shrugged. ‘I imagine that he will try to consolidate his alibi,’ he said. ‘And by this time tomorrow his friends will be falling over themselves to assure us that he was at this party, all night, and in full view of them for all that time.’

  ‘And the more versions of the story there are, the more likely they are to contradict.’

  ‘We have to hope so. And we also have to hope that the photographs exist and that you can get your hands on them, or at least on the negatives. Once we can prove a direct link between May and Mary Fields, a link he may not wish to have exposed elsewhere, we’re one step further on to proving that he murdered her. And I’m now even more inclined to favour him over Ethan Samuels.’

  ‘Inclining and proving can be a whole field apar
t. They’ll close ranks against us. Like I said, it’s a club we don’t belong to.’

  ‘And in any club there is a central clique and there are the hangers-on, the ones who have to try hard just to keep a fingertip hold. Then there’s the staff who see everything and servants brought in from outside who have no loyalty to anyone and the chauffeurs left to gossip among themselves outside, who would notice if somebody drove away. No, Mickey, we don’t belong to the club and so we concentrate on those who don’t belong either but who are in a position to see the way it works.’

  FIFTY-TWO

  Back in their offices, Charles May and Edmund Fry had cancelled all the day’s appointments and were in conference together. The effect of the police action was already being felt; two of their clients had called to ask questions, one informing Edmund Fry that he would be taking his business elsewhere. It might be a difficult few weeks, Fry thought, but eventually it would all blow over.

  He had questioned his friend, going over and over exactly what the police had said to him and what they had wanted to know, and now he felt somewhat relieved. ‘There is nothing whatsoever that they can do,’ Edmund said. ‘You were elsewhere on the night of the murder so how can they suspect you? We’ll speak to our friends, get our stories straight. My advice to you would be to forget about it.’

  ‘And I suppose Celia is going to forget about it too, old man. You know what she’s like – she’ll be sucking up every little bit of gossip, ready to use it against me with her father.’

  ‘No, she won’t. Think about it, Charlie, just for a moment. She won’t want to do anything that draws any more attention to this. The best thing the pair of you can do is go away for a few weeks. Take a trip – I can manage here. Go away until this has all blown itself out. People forget in no time.’

  ‘They won’t forget something like this,’ Charles May said bitterly. ‘Edmund, I plan to make a complaint. A formal complaint to the highest authority I can find. That man will find himself out of a job.’

  Edmund Fry shook his head. ‘Look, Charlie. You once advised me to leave well alone when I was ready to go out all guns blazing. When my grandmother died I couldn’t believe that she had done something so stupid as to leave that woman money. But you pointed out to me it would do our reputation more harm if—’