by Mike Ashley
“Yes, sir. She was ever so sorry, shocked you might say . . .”
“Yes, all right. What do you want?”
“A boy’s just come to the back door with a note from Miss Amory, sir.”
Fife took the note from Nancy, read it swiftly and crumpled it in his hand. “Tell Mrs Blount Miss Amory will not be returning tonight. And, Nancy, take some of that rouge off your face. This is a house of mourning.”
“Yes, sir,” her tone was submissive, but her glance smouldered with resentment. Or passion.
“Miss Amory being . . . ?” Toop raised his eyebrows.
“The children’s nurse-cum-governess; she’s visiting her sister in Walkerville, who’s been taken ill. It appears her condition has worsened.”
Toop nodded. “I won’t trouble you any further, sir.” In the doorway he paused. “How would you do it, sir?”
Fife needed no qualification of the question. “With the Smith & Wesson I keep in my desk drawer, I suppose.”
Toop found Dr Sandow and Mrs Blount consoling each other over tea and cakes.
“How were you made aware that Mrs Fife required your attention, Dr Sandow?”
“She sent a note by Charlie, the stable boy.”
“Would I find this youth on the premises?”
“He’s probably unharnessing the horse,” volunteered Mrs Blount.
Toop gave a nod to Constable Jessup, who disappeared through the back door.
“By the way, Doctor, did you treat Hamish Robertson?”
“I treat all the members of this household,” said Sandow, primly.
“What were his symptoms?”
Sandow hesitated. “He was of a delicate constitution, consumptive, and towards the end his digestion was poor.”
“Did he suffer any hair loss?”
Sandow looked startled. “We of the male gender are prone to baldness, I’m afraid.” He preened his own luxuriant hair and whiskers as he spoke.
“And what of his state of mind?”
“He became irrational, even deranged.”
“But not deranged enough to be committed to the Lunatic Asylum at Parkside. Or to have his will contested.”
“What are you implying, sir?” asked Sandow, huffily.
“Was he admitted to the General Hospital?”
“No, he died at home.”
“And no doubt was cared for by Mr Fife’s own undertaking establishment. What was the certified cause of death?”
“Consumption and decline.”
“Wouldn’t you concur that his symptoms were similar to those of Mrs Fife?”
Sandow coloured to the roots of his mutton chops. “Mrs Fife didn’t have consumption, sir.”
“And neither in all probability did Mr Robertson,” said Toop to Jessup as they returned to the Gilbert Street branch through the gathering dusk. “The results of a post mortem might prove interesting if we could get an exhumation order from the coroner.”
“I thought we wuz investigating an accident.” Jessup was surprised.
“So we are, but there are some peculiarities which I’m sure you noticed.” When the sergeant failed to volunteer any observations Toop continued. “I don’t believe Mrs Fife ran into the kitchen. I believe she was dragged there, hence the black track marks in the drawing room and the passage.”
“Why would anyone do that?”
“To make it look as if the flames were fanned by her flight. Her hands and arms were relatively unscathed. Why didn’t she attempt to beat out the flames? Her fingernails tell a different story, Alby – traces of skin and blood and something totally unrelated – a bluish tinge.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Ada Fife has some of the classic symptoms of arsenic poisoning – poor digestion, hair loss, irrational behaviour and a bluish tint to the nails. The same symptoms were exhibited by Hamish Robertson. That doctor is either a fool or an accomplice.”
“Aren’t you jumping to conclusions, Mr Toop?”
“Better to jump when the trail’s hot than drag one’s feet when it’s cold. Observe, Alby, that both deaths are advantageous to Mr George Duguld Fife. The first made him full owner of a large emporium on Rundle Street and of a terrace house in the fashionable district of North Adelaide. The second rids him of a neurotic wife and allows him to make a more satisfactory marriage. And think of the convenience of having one’s own chemist shop next door to one’s own undertaking establishment.”
Unfortunately, Coroner Thomas Ward, JP did not concur that there were suspicious circumstances in either case and refused the application for exhumation. Ada Fife’s body was released for burial. What if Fife had purchased arsenic and signed the poison’s ledger? Had Toop never heard of rats in the cellar? Or Jessup sniggered to Toop, gentlemen who took small amounts as an aphrodisiac? Or women using arsenic as a cosmetic?
Not only, thought Toop bitterly, to add that George Duguld Fife was a respectable member of society, a member of the Adelaide Club and the coroner had no wish to offend him by insinuation that all was not right and proper in his household.
Toop attended the funeral officiated at St Andrew’s Church by Canon Dove and the burial in the nearby Wesleyan cemetery. He was mainly interested in the person of Miss Emily Vickers, the family friend described by Mrs Blount as not handsome but kind. She was a woman over thirty, with frizzy hair and a muddy complexion not enhanced by the unrelieved black of her moiré dress and the plumed hat tilted over her forehead. She had charge of the children and seemed very fond of them. George Fife’s face was devoid of expression, his eyes opaque as blue ice within their silver lashes. He wore a long black coat and top hat.
“Ain’t he a handsome one, though?” whispered Mrs Blount, as Toop slipped into a pew beside her.
Nancy also attended and managed to look voluptuous even in a plain black dress. Charlie was suitably sombre in dark-grey knee britches and jacket, woollen stockings and elastic-sided boots. The only member of the household missing was Ivy Amory.
“She hasn’t been to the house since the mistress died,” informed the housekeeper. “Right poorly she is, so Dr Sandow says. Must have caught what her sister had.”
Toop frowned, but said nothing. He managed to collar the doctor as he was following the coffin out of the church. “I understand you are treating Miss Amory. May I enquire of you your diagnosis?”
“No, you may not,” snapped Sandow. “That is a confidential matter between doctor and patient.”
There’s nothing to prevent me from paying her a courtesy call, Toop said to himself, once I’ve obtained her address from the indefatigably loquacious Mrs Blount.
Miss Amory’s sister, whose name was Mrs Ramsey, lived in one of the double-fronted cottages along Williams Street, Walkerville, where one opened the wicker gate and was almost immediately on a shallow verandah confronting the front door.
Mrs Ramsey showed no signs of ill health. She was a tall, dark woman with high cheekbones set between sunken eyes and sunken cheeks. Her sister was a younger, rounder version with the same dark hair and fierce black eyes. Her complexion was sallow, she looked ill and despite the heat of the summer noon she had a shawl drawn close about her throat. She was propped high on lace-trimmed pillows on a white-painted iron bedstead. Everything was white including her night-dress and the quilt, but for the scarlet embroidery on her shawl.
While Mrs Ramsey fussed over her, Toop wandered to her dressing table and examined her hairbrush. It was thickly entangled with hairs.
With Mrs Ramsey standing disapprovingly in the doorway, Toop sat gingerly on the end of the bed and fixed Miss Amory with a sympathetic but intent eye. She in turn studied his freckled face and shrewd hazel eyes with an expression bordering on fearful suspense. Toop would have liked to catch a glimpse of her fingernails, but she kept her arms under the quilt.
“I don’t understand why you wish to question me. Wasn’t the coroner’s verdict death by misadventure?”
“So it was, but I’m not completely satisfied. When
a doubt gnaws like a rat in my brain I have to harry it like a terrier.”
“And you smell a rat?”
“Yes, when Charlie returned on his pony from his visit to Dr Sandow he thought he heard the front door slam. Was it you leaving the house?”
“No, I spent all afternoon with my sister.”
“That’s right,” said Mrs Ramsey, staunchly.
“Miss Vickers, Mrs Blount and the children were watching Charles Blondin teetering sixty feet above the ground, Mr Fife and Nancy can alibi each other . . .”
He had taken a wild shot, but the shaft struck home. Her face took on a yellow hue. “What do you mean?”
“Surely you suspected your employer and his maid of having a clandestine affair. I’ve made enquiries at his millinery establishment. They spent the afternoon together in an upstairs room.”
She made a choking sound and slumped forward. Her sister was instantly by her side, patting her back soothingly and glaring fiercely at Toop. “If you’ve no real business with my sister I suggest you go.”
“One last thing. Would you be kind enough to show me your hands?”
She gasped and fell back against her sister’s supporting arm. Toop felt it was time to make his presence scarce. Since the case was officially closed, he had no business to be there and it would be difficult to explain his conduct if the Commissioner received a complaint via Fife.
As he was leaving he saw a woman alighting from a victoria. She was wearing grey, was heavily veiled and carried a basket over her arm. As he watched, she knocked on the front door, exchanged a few words with Mrs Ramsey and passed her the basket. When she turned back she saw Toop standing by his horse. She halted mid-stride, her head turned in his direction. He caught the gleam of her eyes behind her veil before she climbed into the carriage. Toop went thoughtfully on his way. He had recognized the driver as Charlie, Fife’s stable boy. Before returning to Gilbert Street, he called in at the telegraph office.
Several other cases demanded the detective’s attention over February, but when he was free to pursue the Fife affair he made his first port of call the chemist on Rundle Street East to examine the Poisons Register. While he was wading through the pages, the chemist whispered something to his boy, who went into the back room to fetch a ladder.
“I apologize,” the chemist pointed to an unsightly strip of fly-paper clustered with tiny black corpses hanging from the ceiling, “but the hot weather do bring in the blowies.”
Toop watched idly as the boy climbed the ladder and replaced the strip. “Lured by molasses to a sticky fate, eh?”
“It’s the arsenic that does ’em in.”
“Arsenic.” Toop’s hand jerked, inadvertently tearing the page he was studying.
“Yes, sir, fly-paper is impregnated with arsenic.” He eyed the Register. “Look what you’ve gone and done, sir.”
“My turn to apologise. Of course, no-one would have to sign the Poisons Register to buy fly-paper.”
“No, sir. No way anyone could murder anyone with fly-paper. How’d you do it? Serve it up with the tea and scones?”
Toop stared thoughtfully at the glass amphorae of coloured tinctures on the top shelf, reminding customers that the profession of the apothecary was among the oldest in the world.
On his return to Gilbert Street, he collared a passing constable. “Harris, I want you to go and purchase some fly-paper and arrest any stray moggie you see lurking about.”
Constable Jessup looked up from a copy of The Register with a wide grin. “Here’s sumpthin’ you might be interested in, Mr Toop. The recently bereaved Mr George Duguld Fife has announced his engagement to Miss Emily Vickers. Not wasting any time, is ’e?”
Toop was silent for a few minutes.
“Alby, you and I are going to visit the Fife household in the presence of two constables. We’ll call by the telegraph office on our way.”
Although he expected George Fife to be absent at the Emporium, Toop examined the elegant facade of local limestone and imported ironwork and decided to take the precaution of entering by the back door. He found Mrs Blount drinking tea while she poured over the social pages in The Register. Her eyelids looked swollen; she had obviously been crying. She evinced no surprise at his intrusion; she looked beyond that.
He sat beside her and sipped the tea she provided for him. She seemed grateful for his company.
“Momentous news, hey?” He glanced at the newspaper.
“With the mistress not cold in her grave and Mr Vickers at death’s door, so they say.”
“Oh they do, do they?”
“Well, Dr Sandow says. Still, the children need a mother. And Miss Vickers is a very kind woman. At least I used to think so.”
“What’s happened to change your opinion?”
“Been given me notice, haven’t I? Miss Vickers wants to bring her own cook into the household once she’s married.”
“What about Nancy?”
“She’s going, too, but the master’s got her a position in that millinery shop he owns, so she’ll be all right.”
Toop hid a smile. Fife was certainly not going to let his new marriage interfere with his amours with the fetching Nancy.
“And Miss Amory?”
“She’s right poorly, the poor dear.”
“Yes, I know. I went to see her. I think I saw you arriving in Mr Fife’s victoria. You were carrying a basket.”
She opened her eyes as wide as her puffy lids would allow. “Not I, sir. If I want to visit Miss Amory I have to walk.”
“Perhaps it was Nancy. The lady wore a veil.”
“More likely Miss Vickers on one of her errands of mercy. She likes to visit the sick with dainties from her own kitchen to tempt their appetites.”
Toop nodded, looking a little bored. Rising, he glanced around the kitchen. From the ceiling hung a strip of fly-paper with its cargo of dead flies. She followed the direction of his gaze.
“Not a pretty sight, but what can one do in the summertime? Where do all the flies go in the winter, that’s what I’d like to know.”
There was a sharp rat-tat-tat at the front door. “That will be the doctor,” said Mrs Blount.
“Someone in the house is sick?”
“ ‘Nancy’s feeling a bit queasy.’ She dropped her voice to a confidential whisper. “If you ask me she might have to pay the piper for the jig she’s been dancing.”
Jessup’s craggy face split into a grin as he realized the inference of her words.
Sandow greeted Toop sombrely, without surprise or rancour. His face looked hangdog, drooping between his whiskers.
“I’m glad to see you here, Inspector. It saves me a trip into the city. Miss Amory has expressed a wish to speak to you. I’m afraid that young woman is not long for this world. Will you accompany me back to see her?”
“Miss Amory dying!” gasped Mrs Blount. “Am I permitted to visit her?”
“She’s had too many visitors,” said the doctor grimly and went out the back door to the tiny cottages that housed the servants.
“I wonder what he meant by that,” said Mrs Blount.
Toop said nothing, but drank a second cup of tea with the housekeeper while awaiting the doctor’s return. He asked with his eyebrows an unspoken question. Sandow shook his head. “Nothing lethal. She’s suffering nausea from quite a natural cause.”
Mrs Blount sniffed.
Toop and his companions followed the doctor’s trap the short distance to Walkerville and along Gilbert Road, past the Buckingham Arms, across Stephens Terrace past the shops, the paddock where the boys played quoits and skittles, past the Sussex Arms to Mrs Ramsey’s cottage. The day was hot, the sun a ball of fire in the sky. Jessup took off his shako and mopped his face before he entered the house, where the gloom occasioned by the drawn curtains gave an illusion of coolness.
Toop recognized the smell as soon as he entered the bedroom. Ivy Amory was sallow and feverish, her arms lay on a sheet spread on top of the coverlet. Her hair ha
d been shorn away in a belated remedy for fever. Several healing scratches were now visible on her neck. Her sunken eyes were alert and held a rush of relief when she recognized Toop.
“Gangrene,” Toop grunted. “She should be in the General Hospital.”
“It’s too late. I was called in too late. Not even amputation can save her now.”
“Don’t blame Dr Sandow,” whispered Ivy. “I refused admission. What would it have led to? The realization that I was involved in Ada Fife’s arrest, trial and death at the end of a rope in Adelaide Gaol.”
“Were you involved?” he asked, gently.
Her face was suddenly Medusa-like, viperish and gloating. “I thrust her into the fire and held her there. She fought like a wildcat, but I was stronger. When she stopped struggling I dragged her into the kitchen . . .”
“To make it look as if she had run in panic and fanned the flames.”
“Yes. When the exhilaration of killing her was gone, I realized the extent of my burns. I ran upstairs and changed my dress and shoes – I had scorched one shoe on the hearth. From the window I saw Charlie riding in on his pony. I knew I had to leave before the doctor arrived. I ran out the front door, slamming it in my haste – that’s what Charlie heard. I went to my sister’s and she put butter on my burns, but it didn’t help . . .”
“Why did you kill her?”
“Because George told me that he loved me, that if it wasn’t for his wife he would marry me. What a fool I was to be seduced by the promise of a marriage that would never be. He’s going to marry an heiress and all the time he’s been bedding that little slut Nancy,” her voice trailed away with exhaustion, but after a moment she rallied. “I can’t sign your statement, but I want everyone in this room to bear witness to my confession. Now I can die with a clear conscience.”
“You have a lot to answer for, Sandow,” Toop said, sternly, as they stood on the shallow verandah. “You surely must have had your suspicions, but then these people are the top drawer, the crème de la crème, so how could they possibly be guilty of murder? You’ll have to appear at the inquest and the court will make of you what it will.”
