‘When exactly was the woman discovered?’
He hesitated again, then inclined his head. ‘The body was spotted when The Grenadier emptied at closing time.’
‘I see. Do you believe she was killed when the public house closed, or earlier in the evening?’
He inhaled slowly before answering. ‘We won’t know until the post-mortem. The fog was heavy last night and she wasn’t immediately obvious—’ He broke off and flicked open his notebook. ‘Mrs Harrington. Normal procedure is you answer my questions, not the other way around.’
‘Of course,’ she replied with no hint of apology. ‘In which case, then please,’ she lifted her hands from her lap in surrender, ‘go ahead and ask.’
He coughed into a fist and peered at his notebook. ‘What exactly is your relationship to Mr William Osborne?’
Flora hesitated, unsure of the relevance of such a question. How could she begin to explain the situation that existed between her and William? Nor did she wish to, not having got it straight in her own head. ‘He’s my father,’ she replied, settling on the simple truth.
‘Ah, I see.’ He relaxed his shoulders as if he had anticipated a different response. ‘Mr Osborne’s manservant informed me that you both attended the theatre last evening? Might I ask which one?’
‘The Theatre Royal in Haymarket. We left here at around seven forty-five. Mr Dunne, who summoned the cab, will confirm that.’ She half expected him to demand the name of the play, but he merely nodded.
‘And you returned, when?’
Flora thought for a moment. ‘The performance ended at around ten-fifteen, after which we ate dinner in the West End, and arrived back here at around eleven-fifty.’
He scribbled something on the page, taking his time. ‘Did you come straight home from the restaurant?’
‘Yes.’ Flora fidgeted. ‘If the woman in the alley wasn’t immediately detected, might she have been killed elsewhere and dumped outside the public-house?’
‘Mrs Harrington.’ He flicked a speck of dust from his striped trousers. ‘I cannot possibly comment. And this interview is going to take twice the time required if you continue to ask me questions.’
‘I apologize, I didn’t intend to be difficult. I’m simply interested. After all murders don’t happen that often do they? At least not in Knightsbridge.’
Flora glanced past his shoulder to where Sally stood at their open front door, a fist pressed to her mouth to stop herself from laughing.
‘Now.’ He poised his pencil ready over a page of his notebook. ‘Did you see anyone enter or leave the apartment block at any time last night?’
‘Well no, I didn’t. I don’t know anyone here, I-’ she broke off as Arthur Crabbe’s face jumped into her head, followed by that of the woman who had accompanied him. In any other situation, she wouldn’t hesitate, but she was unwilling to implicate him. She would speak to William about it first, and if she was challenged at a later date, simply claim to have forgotten.
‘Mrs Harrington?’ Inspector Maddox prompted.
‘I-I was just thinking. And no, I don’t recall anyone.’ She paused before asking, ‘What did the victim look like?’
Resignation sat in the detective’s eyes as he flicked back several pages in his notebook. ‘A young female of approximately twenty-five years of age,’ he recited in a monotone. ‘Dark hair, medium height, wearing a black wool skirt, a white silk blouse, and a dark green woollen coat.’ He snapped it shut again. ‘Does that description remind you of anyone?’
‘I-I don’t think so.’ A sudden chill ran through her as an image of the woman’s brooch returned vividly. It couldn’t have been the same woman, surely? ‘Was there anything distinctive about her? A certain piece of jewellery perhaps?’
He narrowed his eyes before consulting the notebook again. ‘No. She wore no jewellery at all apart from an engagement ring. In fact, her pockets were empty, with neither purse or handbag, which brings us to the conclusion it was a robbery gone wrong.’ His eyes hardened into suspicion. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘No reason, other than I am trying to help, Inspector.’ Flora swallowed, suddenly nervous. ‘I cannot, I’m afraid. There must be thousands of women with green coats in London.’
‘Precisely.’ He scribbled something else on the page without looking up.
‘You say it might have been a robbery?’ A worm of doubt nagged at her. ‘But she still wore an engagement ring?’
He consulted the notebook again, if reluctantly. ‘Yes, here it is. Yellow gold, fourteen carat, one carat diamond.’
‘Why would a robber have ignored that?’
‘Rings, Mrs Harrington, are notoriously difficult to remove. Her attacker might have tried but given up in fear of being seen. Or maybe he simply didn’t notice she wore one.’ He frowned at the page in his hand. ‘Ah, yes. She wore gloves.’ He snapped the notebook shut with a final snap.
‘And yet she was strangled,’ Flora said, thoughtful. ‘At least, that’s the rumour going around the apartment building,’ she added when he swung his head towards her and arched an eyebrow. ‘Though surely robbers bash people over the head? I would not have thought many went in for throttling.’
‘Indeed? And exactly how many killers have you apprehended, Mrs Harrington?’
Flora was on the verge of saying, ‘Three at the last count,’ but resisted. She doubted this man would be impressed by the fact, or was even likely to believe her. ‘What conclusion have you reached, Inspector?’
He returned the notebook to his pocket, the interview apparently at an end. ‘We handle quite a few acts of violence linked to alcoholic beverages in my business. You’d be surprised to learn how many men kill their wives or sweethearts after a few ales.’
‘I thought you said it was a robbery?’
‘Well – we are exploring several theories. It’s early days as yet.’
‘Is that so?’ Flora narrowed her eyes, conscious she was being patronized. ‘Well, Inspector, if that’s all—’ She rose, smoothing her coat from the waist with both hands.
‘I haven’t said the interview is over, Mrs Harrington.’ When she didn’t move, he clambered reluctantly to his feet.
‘I must have misunderstood,’ she replied unapologetic. ‘What else do you wish to ask me?’
‘Well – uh.’ He flushed again. ‘Actually, I think we’ve covered everything.’
Flora felt a surge of sympathy for him. He had all the presence of command, which in her case clearly wasn’t working. ‘Then I’ll bid you a good day. And as you asked so nicely,’ she called over her shoulder as she strode away, ‘I’ll send my maid out to speak with you.’
Chapter 8
Flora took tea that afternoon seated comfortably in a wing back chair beside a crackling fire, the only sounds a clop of hooves and the odd motor car horn from St George’s Place beyond the window.
Having failed to find a suitable work of fiction in William’s sparse library, she reverted to browsing the suffrage pamphlet she had rescued that morning from the lobby waste paper basket.
Belatedly, she recalled something the policeman had mentioned earlier. ‘Sally? You didn’t tell me you sent Inspector Maddox away last night.’
Sally looked up from mending a petticoat. ‘I wasn’t going to let some flatfoot question me when I didn’t know nothing.’ She shrugged. ‘’Sides, I had nothing to tell ’im. Still, don’t.’ She dipped her head back to her stitching.
‘Anything, Sally. You didn’t know anything.’
‘That’s what I said.’ Sally sniffed.
‘What questions did he ask you?’
‘Same thing he asked you, I expect.’ Sally drew her needle slowly through the delicate silk. ‘He asked where I was last night, and if I saw anyone. As if I spent me evening staring out of the window with all that unpacking to do. Oh!’ Her needle halted in mid-air. ‘I did tell him about that Mr Gordon coming round when you was at the theatre.’
‘Mr Gordon was here while William and I
were out?’ Flora frowned. ‘I wonder why?’
‘He told Randall he needed some papers from the study.’ Sally tied off the thread and snapped it between her teeth. ‘All togged up he was too. Like he was off out somewhere.’
‘You weren’t listening to his conversation with Randall by any chance?’ Flora instilled reproach into her voice, but at the same time hoped her maid’s curiosity matched her own.
‘Course not.’ Sally unravelled a bobbin and cut a length of white thread. ‘That Randall asked me to see him to the door when he left.’ She sniffed. ‘Like I was some housemaid or something.’
Flora raised the pamphlet to conceal a smile. Sally didn’t like taking orders from anyone but herself. ‘Did Mr Gordon say anything to you when you saw him out?’
‘Only that he would call again first thing this morning to accompany Mr Osborne to Whitehall.’ Sally licked the end of the thread, one eye closed to insert the end through her needle. ‘I told him that Mr William probably knew the way by now, him being a grown-up and all, but he just stared at me confused, like. Is he foreign or something?’
‘It’s possible, I suppose,’ Flora mused, the thought having not occurred to her before now. She hadn’t much liked the way Gordon stared at her when he’d caught her eavesdropping on William either. Although that was most probably guilt and entirely her own fault. ‘Did he arrive before the police came about the murder?’
‘Ages before.’ Sally contemplated her left thumb, which exhibited a hangnail. ‘Why, Missus? You don’t think he was up to no good around in Old Barrack Yard do you?’
‘No, I don’t.’ Flora went back to her leaflet, then something else occurred to her. ‘Did he take anything from the study when he left?’
‘Dunno.’ Sally rummaged through her workbasket and exchanged the petticoat for another, smaller garment where the embroidery had unravelled. ‘He had a briefcase when he arrived, so he could have.’
‘Ah well, it’s not my business, and I expect William knows all about it.’ Flora frowned, uneasy with the idea of the enigmatic assistant having access to William’s study. But if Randall didn’t think it unusual, who was she to cast doubt?
‘What’s so interesting in that pamphlet, Miss Flora?’ Sally nodded at the paper in Flora’s hand. ‘You’ve been reading it this last fifteen minutes.’
‘It’s quite fascinating, actually.’ She laid the leaflet on her lap and reached for her teacup. ‘According to this, the first serious campaign to obtain the right for women to vote began in eighteen sixty-five.’
‘That so, Miss?’ Sally raised a cynical eyebrow. ‘Shame they haven’t got anywhere then.’
‘That’s exactly what I thought until I read this pamphlet, but various women have campaigned for a change in the rights of women for over fifty years.’ At Sally’s non-committal grunt, she added. ‘No really, this campaign is important and might affect all women one day. Especially if Mrs Garrett Fawcett manages to get a bill put through parliament, which seems to be what they are aiming for.’
‘Huh! I doubt servants will ever get the vote.’ Sally didn’t bother to look up.
Flora didn’t respond, but perhaps Sally had a point. The campaign was squarely aimed at married women with property and offered no incentives for either professionals or the serving classes to fight the cause. ‘Maybe not yet, but we have to begin somewhere.’
Then something she had not noticed before made her bolt upright. Returning the teacup to the saucer, she brought the page closer. A red and green circle with a white flash across the centre sat inside the illustration of the tree; the words National Union of Women’s’ Suffrage Societies around the circumference. Like a badge.
The woman Mr Crabbe had escorted from the building wore a brooch like that. A sort of badge, albeit an elaborate one. Was she a suffragist too? Was that what she had argued about with Crabbe? Had Miss Lange tried to recruit Mrs Crabbe to the cause and her husband had objected?
She flicked to the next page, which displayed an announcement that the next meeting of the society was that evening at their headquarters in Victoria Street.
If Flora could contrive a way to attend, and the woman she had seen was there, she could stop worrying. That didn’t help the poor creature found in Old Barrack Yard, but it would set Flora’s mind at rest and thus exonerate Mr Crabbe.
A sharp knock on the door preceded the arrival of Randall. ‘Excuse me, Miss Flora. Mr Osborne rang a few moments ago saying he regrets having been delayed at Whitehall and will not be home for dinner.’
‘I see.’ Flora’s mood dipped a notch because the caller wasn’t Bunny. They had only spoken once in the last thirty-six hours, a brief, unsatisfactory conversation to let him know she had arrived safely. ‘Is Mr Osborne still on the line?’ she asked in a tone brighter than she felt.
‘No, Miss Flora. He was on his way to an important meeting.’ His tone implied that Randall regarded his time too precious to be wasted carrying messages.
‘In that case, please don’t bother to prepare dinner for us. Sally and I will eat out.’
‘As you wish.’ His gaze briefly slid over Sally, his upper lip curled. Or had she imagined that?
‘Well, Missus, that sounds good to me.’ Sally hunched her shoulders in delight.
‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I doubt it will be that exciting.’ Flora waved the pamphlet in the air before discarding it onto the table. ‘We’re going to a meeting of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies.’
Sally’s hands dropped into her lap, crushing the garment into a crumpled heap. ‘Whatever for?’
‘Don’t scowl at me like that,’ Flora chided, though a laugh bubbled into her throat. ‘It might be interesting, not to mention educational. And it says here that refreshments are being served.’
Sally dipped her head to her sewing without a word, though disappointment emanated from her in waves.
*
‘This is the place.’ Flora stepped out of the cab on the corner of Victoria Street and Abbey Orchard Street, squinting up at a four-storey red-brick building, its upper floors disappearing into a layer of fog. ‘Although had I known how long it might take to hail a cab, I would have asked Dunne to find one for us. I fear we are horribly late.’
‘I tried to warn you, Missus.’ Sally followed her into the entrance that straddled the corner. ‘My uncle was a cab driver, and never picked up a woman off the street if she didn’t have an escort. Said she couldn’t be respectable.’
‘How many relatives do you have, exactly?’ Flora negotiated a lengthy corridor marked with handwritten notices proclaiming NUWSS Meeting here Tonight every few feet. ‘You seem to possess an anecdote for every occasion involving at least one of them.’
‘Lots,’ Sally replied, ‘but some of them I don’t like to talk about.’ She halted abruptly and tugged at Flora’s sleeve. ‘Are you sure I’m welcome here, Missus?’ She indicated her smart but dyed black coat and crumpled hat that had seen better days. ‘They’ll be ladies in there.’
‘To be honest, I’m not sure I should be here either. I don’t intend staying long.’ Only long enough to reassure herself Miss Lange was alive and well. She approached an angular woman who stood beside a half-open door who greeted them with a finger held to her thin, puckered lips.
‘Hush, please. Miss Sharp is about to speak.’ The woman turned away to rearrange a pile of posters on a table.
Flora murmured an apology and gestured to Sally to follow her into the hall. When her maid paused and poked her tongue out at the woman’s turned back, Flora grabbed her upper arm and tugged her inside the door that flapped shut behind them.
The room Flora found herself in had long windows covered by heavy black curtains that cast a gloom that the row of gaslights arranged along the walls couldn’t penetrate. Chairs had been laid out in regimental rows, most of which were occupied. A platform at the end held eight women sat on upright chairs set out in a semicircle. Their uniform of smart, dark jackets and plain ha
ts made them all look like schoolteachers.
Bare floorboards creaked beneath Flora’s feet and dust tickled her nose as she waved Sally into a chair on the back row. Her rear had scarcely connected with the hard wooden seat, when a woman on the platform rose and approached a lectern which bore a large version of the same emblem that graced the leaflet in Flora’s pocket.
The speaker looked to be in her early thirties, a trim, upright figure garbed all in grey, with a long face and prominent nose. Her large, expressive eyes swept the room as she prepared to speak.
‘Thank you for turning out on such a damp and foggy December evening,’ she began, her clear round vowels echoing round the room. ‘And for those of you who do not know me my name is Evelyn Sharp, and I have come here this evening to tell you about the Women’s Social and Political Union, the reasons for which will soon become clear.’
‘I knew she’d be a toff,’ Sally whispered.
Flora nudged her into silence, her attention on the woman on the platform, entranced by her confidence and the passion in her commanding, almost masculine voice.
‘I will begin with a brief introduction of our cause for those who are new to the society,’ Miss Sharp continued. ‘Mrs Charlotte Manning formed The Kensington Society in the spring of eighteen hundred and sixty-five. In April of the following year, we petitioned the government to instigate change in the law pertaining to the right of women to vote, receive education and own property. Despite the support of men such as Henry Fawcett and Mr Stuart Mill, both of whom are no longer with us, the bill was defeated by one hundred and ninety-six votes to seventy-three.’
A flurry of applause greeted this information, though Flora wondered why if there was no success to celebrate.
‘Not until eighty-two did the Married Woman’s Property Act grant us the right to keep our earnings,’ Miss Sharp went on when the hall fell silent again. ‘Even now, a wife is still regarded as one of her husband’s possessions.’
A murmur of disgruntled agreement ran through the room, halted by Miss Sharp’s raised arm.
A Knightsbridge Scandal Page 7
