The Advocate's Wife

by Norman Russell

  Louise Whittaker stopped speaking, and seemed lost in thought for a while. She had obviously become absorbed in the mystery of Amelia Garbutt.

  ‘The oddest thing is, Mr Box,’ she said at last, ‘that she should have gone wherever she did go, alone. It suggests that the man – there will be a man – was not sure that she would come, and therefore did not send a groom or other servant to fetch her. It also seems to me that she could only have been going somewhere local.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am, that certainly seems to be indicated. There are very few people living in the area.’

  ‘And then she was murdered … Somewhere, Mr Box, there will be a topcoat, a hat, possibly a scarf, hidden away. Or maybe destroyed. A man would, perhaps, destroy such things. A woman – have you considered that it might have been a woman?’

  ‘No, ma’am. You see, the body must have been carried up a slope to the canal and tipped into the water-channel. I should think it would need a man to do that.’

  ‘Yes, I see. Still, those things may have been hidden rather than destroyed. A woman might have hidden them, or even kept them. We tend to have keepsakes, you know – rings, locks of hair, old letters, photographs … Have I been of any help?’

  ‘You have, ma’am. But, you know – I sometimes think, Miss Whittaker, that you don’t care for men very much! It’s the way you talk – a man this, a man that. It ruffles my feathers a bit, if you’ll pardon the expression. Don’t you like us, then?’

  Box felt himself blushing at his own effrontery.

  Louise Whittaker laughed. She stood up and leaned elegantly on the mantelpiece, looking down at her visitor. There was a graveness in her manner, but no trace of hostility.

  ‘I don’t like some of the assumptions men make about women, Mr Box. But that doesn’t mean that I dislike the male sex as a matter of principle. I quite like some of its members. I like you. In fact, I’ve been wondering of late why you have taken to calling on me. My original purpose was to throw light on some obscure scripts, in order to put a bold forger behind bars. Since then, we have seen you out here in Finchley no fewer than six – no, seven – times. You ask me questions, Mr Box, but most of those questions you could answer yourself.’

  He mustn’t blush again! What would she think of him? And yet there was more than a grain of truth in her gently mocking words.

  ‘I come here to ask you things, Miss Whittaker, because you’re a clear thinker. There are quick thinkers around in abundance – I’m one of them, but I don’t always think clearly, whereas you do. And the other reason I come is that – well, I should have thought that was obvious. Your little maid Ethel evidently knows why I come, and I expect you do as well. I like you, Miss Whittaker, and that’s the simple truth underlying that particular mystery.’

  Box looked up as he said these words, and found himself being appraised by a pair of steady blue eyes. Miss Whittaker smiled, and turned towards her desk.

  ‘It’s not a crime to like someone, Mr Box,’ she said. ‘But come, you and I have our various tasks to do. I’ll ring for Ethel to see you out.’

  Miss Whittaker resumed her seat at the desk and opened the pages of her book. She took up a pen and dipped it in the ink well. Inspector Box retrieved his hat and gloves.

  Ethel, in response to the bell, came into the room.

  ‘Can you come to tea one Sunday afternoon? Or will the criminals prevent you?’

  Inspector Box reeled slightly as he turned round to the window. He looked comically delighted and confused. Ethel began to giggle again, this time quite openly.

  ‘What? Tea? Do you mean here?’

  ‘Where else? Drop me a line, saying when you can come, and all will be made ready. Now go, Mr Box: solve your crimes, and keep us safe!’

  Arnold Box glanced around the first-floor drawing-room of an elegant town mansion in Carlton House Terrace, and wondered how it would look if the dust sheets were removed from the furniture, and the chandelier released from the black silk bag that imprisoned it. Three small gilt chairs had been uncovered, two of them for him and Sergeant Knollys. The third chair was occupied by a lady of fifty or so, dark-haired and bright-eyed. She was wearing a long, caped outdoor coat, and a rather fussy but fashionable hat.

  ‘You’ve chosen a curious moment to visit us, Inspector Box,’ said the lady, glancing down at a printed calling-card that Box had given to her. ‘You may have noticed that the house is shut up? Well, that is because Mr Stockmayer and I have decided to live permanently in Austria. We’re staying at Claridge’s until the time comes for us to move. That’s where I’ve come from this afternoon. Now, how can I help you? I was intrigued to receive your note.’

  Mrs Stockmayer’s voice carried a hint of foreign intonation, but her English was perfect. She spoke with the authority of someone who was used to being obeyed, but there was no arrogance there. She had a round, pretty, gentle face, which made her seem younger than her years.

  ‘Mrs Stockmayer, my sergeant there – Sergeant Knollys – paid a visit yesterday to your dressmaker, Madame Laplace, in Bond Street. He showed her a dress – a, green silk dress, which she identified as having once belonged to you—’

  ‘Ah, yes! That would have been the Soie de St-Etienne. A lovely dress. When it went out of fashion, I passed it on to my lady’s-maid, Garbutt. But why on earth should you want to know about one of my old dresses?’

  Box did not reply. Instead, he asked another question.

  ‘You gave her some white court shoes, too, didn’t you, ma’am?’

  Mrs Stockmayer looked swiftly at both men, and then went very pale. She could hear the death knell tolling behind Box’s seemingly innocent words.

  ‘I’m sorry to tell you, ma’am,’ said Box, ‘that Amelia Garbutt has been found dead. She was murdered.’

  Mrs Stockmayer began to sob quietly. She produced a handkerchief from her sleeve, and dabbed her eyes. This weeping, thought Box, is quite sincere. Mrs Stockmayer was living proof that, just because people had pots of money, it didn’t mean that they had to be as hard as nails.

  ‘She was the best lady’s-maid I ever had,’ said Mrs Stockmayer in a low voice. ‘She came to me in 1887. The April, it was. From the start, she had more the air of a companion than a lady’s maid. She was very nicely spoken, and clearly well educated. Murdered? It seems incredible. Alphonse – my husband – will be most concerned to hear it. He’s a merchant banker, you know, specializing in railway finance. Oh dear! I can’t believe it!’

  Mrs Stockmayer began to sob again. It took her a while to regain her composure. ‘If it won’t distress you too much, ma’am,’ said Box, ‘I’ll tell you a few details. Miss Garbutt was found dead, garrotted, in a canal in Essex—’

  ‘At Bardley?’ Mrs Stockmayer’s voice suddenly gained a sharp edge.

  ‘Why, yes, ma’am. At Bardley. She was wearing the green silk dress, and also a very valuable diamond necklace. You were obviously a generous employer, Mrs Stockmayer. Did you, perhaps—?’

  ‘No, I certainly didn’t give Garbutt a diamond necklace!’ Mrs Stockmayer smiled in spite of her distress. ‘Garbutt would not have had such an item – she would never have had enough money to buy such a costly thing. Besides, no one with a modicum of taste would wear a necklace with that dress. So if you found a necklace around her neck, then someone must have put it there after she died … And that’s ridiculous, too, because people are murdered for their jewellery, not given it after they’ve been murdered!’

  Box looked at Mrs Stockmayer with a kind of awed respect. She, too, had sensed the enigma of the necklace, its essential incongruity. It wouldn’t fit in to any pattern of probabilities. Well, it would have to be made to fit in …

  ‘You mentioned Bardley just now, Mrs Stockmayer.’

  ‘Yes. You see, when Alphonse – my husband – and I decided to move to Austria, I asked Garbutt whether she would like to accompany us there. To Linz, where we have purchased an apartment. However, she didn’t want to leave England, so I recommended her
as maid-companion to a friend of ours, Mrs Courtney, of Bardley, who was in need of someone like Garbutt. Her previous companion had left her, to look after a sick relative in Cumberland. Garbutt seemed very pleased with the arrangement, I must say.’

  Sergeant Knollys suddenly spoke, and his voice, low but powerful, seemed to reverberate through the shrouded room.

  ‘Would you say, ma’am, that there was anything unusual about Miss Garbutt? Anything that puzzled you at all? You had known her for – what? – five years. Did she ever confide a secret to you?’

  Mrs Stockmayer had all but recovered from the shock. She began to take an interest in the investigation partly for its own sake.

  ‘Well, Sergeant Knollys, I was very fond of Garbutt. She could talk about the latest plays and novels in a natural, unforced manner. She could speak French, too. She told me once that she’d been awarded a bursary to St Margaret’s School for Girls, in Bloomsbury. She could be very close and secretive, you know, and at times, she betrayed a cynical view of the world that was not very – well, not very nice. But when you ask me whether Garbutt ever confided a secret to me – well, the answer must be no.’

  ‘Did Miss Garbutt ever mention any relatives, ma’am?’

  ‘She didn’t often speak about her own family, Mr Box, and for a long time I assumed that all her relations were dead. But earlier this year – when was it? – some time late in March, she told me that an uncle had died, and that she was going to look through his effects. Until that time, I hadn’t known that she’d had any living relatives.’

  ‘And she went to school in Bloomsbury. Would you say that she was a Londoner?’

  ‘Well, yes, presumably. I mean, she never suggested that she wasn’t a Londoner. But she was very reserved about her origins, Inspector. I realized that she didn’t want to dwell on her past history, and I never asked any questions.’

  Box glanced at Sergeant Knollys, who produced a note book. It was time to put down in writing what Mrs Stockmayer was telling them, She saw the sergeant begin writing. The action seemed to unlock her memory of past conversations with her lady’s maid.

  I’ll tell you what I can remember, Inspector, if you think it’s got some bearing on this terrible business. The uncle that she mentioned had lived in straitened circumstances, apparently, in a couple of rooms. She mentioned where it was he’d lived. Yes! Garlick Hill. Somewhere vaguely near the Mansion House. I remember it, because it seemed such an odd name for a street. Alphonse – my husband – cannot abide garlic.’

  Knollys’ pencil moved rapidly over the pages of his note book. He had contrived in some way to accommodate his massive frame to the small gilt chair, though from time to time he gave a little wince of discomfort. With pencil poised, he asked Mrs Stockmayer a question.

  ‘This uncle, ma’am – did Miss Garbutt ever mention his name?’

  ‘No. She just called him her uncle. When she came back from Garlick Hill, she told me that there hadn’t been anything worth retrieving, and that she’d sold everything to a broker.’

  Mrs Stockmayer smiled, rather wistfully.

  ‘When she said “broker”, you know, I was rather surprised. But later, I realized that she hadn’t meant a stockbroker; it was a pawnbroker. There was …’

  Mrs Stockmayer’s voice trailed away for a while. Evidently, she could not think and speak at the same time. Box and Knollys waited for her to continue.

  ‘Garbutt would talk to me, you know,’ she said at last, ‘usually in here, in the evenings, when Alphonse was still at business. We’d sit here, with just the fire lit, and perhaps a shaded oil lamp. I’d do a bit of embroidery, and Garbutt would talk to me in her quiet, slightly sardonic voice. And over a long period of time, I gathered an impression that her early years had been ones of struggle. I don’t mean that she was necessarily poor, but that she had to strive valiantly to maintain a certain standing in society. I admired her for that.’

  Inspector Box sat for a while, thinking over what Mrs Stockmayer had told them. The ghostly, shrouded room, its white dust sheets catching the sun, was the right kind of place to recall these memories of a dead woman.

  Mrs Stockmayer began the preliminaries of rising from her chair. The conversation had drawn to a natural close. Box and Knollys got to their feet.

  ‘Thank you, ma’am,’ said Box. ‘I hope that you and Mr Stockmayer have an enjoyable time in Austria. You’ve been of enormous help to us.’

  ‘I’m absolutely devastated by the news of Garbutt’s death, Inspector. My husband, too, will be very upset. People like Garbutt deserve better of life. Have you been to Bardley? There’s hardly anybody living there at all. It’s just quiet, and peaceful. Who could have done such a dreadful thing? Perhaps it was some madman. Go down there, Mr Box, and speak to our friend Mrs Courtney at Bardley Lodge. Her late husband, you know, was one of Mr Stockmayer’s partners. She has a cool, detached approach to life. If poor Garbutt said or did anything that could throw light on this terrible murder, you may be sure that Mary Courtney will have taken note of it.’

  Inspector Box stood for a moment with his hand on the latch of the iron gate that would take him into the garden of Bardley Lodge. He was a man who felt most at home in the throng and press of great cities, but this isolated corner of Essex was beginning to exert its own peculiar charm. He looked at the house, a substantial, two storey dwelling of dark-red brick festooned with ivy. This was the type of house that well-to-do folk loved to call a ‘cottage’. It was, in fact, a compact but substantial dwelling standing in its own charming country garden.

  A few hundred yards away, the railway line passed between embankments and under the Bardley Aqueduct. It was very quiet, but Box fancied that the smell of the sea was being borne to him on the faintest of breezes. He pushed open the gate to Mrs Courtney’s garden.

  In answer to his knock on the door, an elderly maidservant showed him into a heavily furnished, comfortable room at the rear of the house. A woman who, Box guessed, was not far off seventy years of age, sat in a high-backed chair near the fire. She was wearing steel-rimmed spectacles, and had an open book on her knee.

  ‘Detective Inspector Box has arrived, ma’am,’ said the servant.

  ‘Very well, Ellen. You can bring tea in now. Sit down opposite me, Mr Box. I am Mary Courtney. Sergeant Bickerstaffe has told me all about your visit, and Hannah Stockmayer has written to me. So I know that you bring sad news.’

  This woman, thought Box, has seen a good deal of life, and has grown accustomed to viewing it from a safe emotional distance. That was revealed in her detached, almost cynical way of speaking, and in the placid intelligence of her expression. There would, perhaps, be sympathy here for Amelia Garbutt, but no tears would be shed.

  ‘Mrs Courtney,’ said Box, without preamble, ‘my colleague Sergeant Bickerstaffe told me you insisted that Miss Garbutt did not own a green silk dress—’

  Mrs Courtney held up a hand in what seemed to be amused denial.

  ‘You will appreciate, Inspector, that Isaac Bickerstaffe would interpret any guess from me as a Gospel truth! He is a genuine rustic of the “old retainer” type. I told the good man that I had never seen Garbutt wearing such a dress, and that she had not mentioned a green dress to me. That’s rather a different matter, as I think you’ll see.’

  ‘Miss Garbutt had not been with you long.’

  ‘That is true. We got on very well – I think we recognized a kind of mutual sympathy – but she was here for a mere matter of three weeks. A little more than three weeks, to be exact. And then, on Tuesday, the sixth, she disappeared.’

  The door opened, and the maid, Ellen, wheeled in a trolley, from which she served tea to her mistress and her guest. She handed them plates, and served sandwiches and slices of slab cake. Then she left the room.

  ‘Thank you, ma’am, for giving me tea. It’s very kind of you. Much appreciated.’

  Mrs Courtney smiled, but said nothing. Box glanced round the room. There was a card table near his hostess’s
chair, with two packs of cards standing on it. There was a very cluttered mantelpiece, bearing a massive black marble clock with a small round face, and a framed photograph of a grim-looking bearded man with piercing eyes, perhaps the late Mr Courtney.

  ‘And so, Mr Box, as I was telling you, Garbutt disappeared. Tuesday was her day off, you see, though for the time she was with me she’d stayed in the house, arranging her personal things. But that Tuesday, the sixth, she went out of the house in the evening, and didn’t come back. Her bed was not slept in, and something told me that all was not well. I reported the matter to Sergeant Bickerstaffe the next morning.’

  ‘What did you think of Miss Garbutt as a person? Would you say she was honest?’

  Mrs Courtney flushed with vexation. She uttered a little hiss of annoyance.

  ‘Well, really, Mr Box, you can hardly expect me to answer such an odd question! Garbutt came to me from an old friend, Mrs Stockmayer. Hannah’s recommendation was quite enough for me. But there! I’m forgetting that your position obliges you to ask such questions. Garbutt had rather a forbidding manner. She did not smile easily, and this was disconcerting to some people. My friend Corinna wondered about her personal history – urged me, in fact, to make some discreet enquiries. Corinna’s brother, too, had his doubts about Garbutt … But there: poor Garbutt’s dead. She and I would have agreed very well together.’

  ‘You’ve mentioned a lady called Corinna—’

  ‘Her name is Lady Hardington, and she lives at Heath House. If you look out of that window, Mr Box, you’ll see a large white mansion in the distance, across the heath land. That is Heath House. It’s at a place called High Barrow. Lady Hardington and I are devotees of whist, and we often visit each other. She entertains a lot, because her late husband had been Vice-Marshal of the Diplomatic Corps. On the very night that poor Garbutt disappeared, Corinna held an evening reception for various notables. A grand affair it was, too, I believe. I’d been invited, but I decided not to go. I felt it would have been wrong to leave Garbutt alone in the house so soon after her arrival.’