Dead Letters

by Joan Lock

  ‘But then,’ her voice grew quieter, ‘we went up to that palace place. She wanted to go on the roundabout. There wasn’t room left for me but she wouldn’t wait. She sent me to get some ice cream – even though that meant I would lose my place in the queue.’

  She stared out of the police office window on to the busy platform where people were hurrying for their trains, anxious but free.

  ‘When I came back, she was dead.’

  ‘You saw her, then?’

  ‘Aye, hinny. I did. I knew what must have happened, so I ran away.’ She sighed heavily. ‘Then I thought that would look suspicious. So I came back.’

  Tears began spilling down her thin cheeks.

  ‘I miss her, you know,’ she said.

  Smith shook his head in wonderment.

  ‘I do,’ she assured him. ‘Well, she was all I had, wasn’t she?’ She smiled tremulously. ‘And sometimes we were like sisters.’

  Smith nodded slowly, before saying quietly, ‘What about Arthur?’

  There was a long silence, during which Alice refused to meet his eye. Eventually, she mumbled, ‘He tried to blackmail me.’

  She was crumbling now, tears in her throat, on her face and dripping on to her smart moire dress. ‘He wasn’t much, but I thought he liked me.’

  She was unable to use the word love, probably because she’d never had any.

  ‘He was lying in bed at Mabel’s when he said how much money he wanted. Just about the lot – and that his wife was coming to meet him. When I said, what about us, he laughed and said he’d never look at a stringy old maid like me.’

  Tears were choking her now. Smith leaned forward and handed her one of his large, checked handkerchiefs which had been lovingly laundered by his Betsy. She grasped it, but did not use it – just sobbed and sobbed with uncontrollable grief.

  ‘It was all too much for her,’ said Smith. ‘She had the candlestick in her hand and this fury overcame her and she just smashed it down on his head.’

  ‘She knows she’ll hang,’ said Cheadle. It was more a statement than a question.

  Smith nodded sadly. ‘I don’t think she cares.’

  ‘An ’oo can blame ’er,’ said Cheadle with uncharacteristic sympathy. He paused, then said, ‘You did well, lad, pulling Mr Best’s irons out of the fire for ’im.’ He nodded towards the inspector.

  ‘Oh, both of us were fooled by her,’ Smith insisted.

  ‘Yes, but it was ’im that was in charge, weren’t it?’ He glared at Best. ‘And ’im that’s got all the h’experience and is so clever.’

  ‘Do you think,’ asked Smith, eager to change the subject, ‘with all that about how badly Maud treated her, and the blackmail, that the judge might take pity on her? Mabel says she’ll speak for her.’

  Cheadle shook his head. ‘If ’t’d been just the one, lad, mebbe. But two –’ he sucked his teeth – ‘can’t see it.’

  ‘What I can’t see,’ said Best afterwards, ‘is how you knew that Alice would be leaving at dawn on the train.’

  ‘It was a hunch,’ said Smith airily. ‘You always said I should follow my hunches and …’

  Best gave an oblique glance and sighed. ‘John George, you disappoint me. You’re blushing.’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ the younger man insisted, as the pink glow crept up his neck.

  Best shook his head. ‘Will I never make a fibber out of you?’

  ‘Well, what it was,’ said Smith, ‘I think Mabel mentioned something about Alice having a friend in Birmingham.’

  ‘That’s better,’ said Best. ‘But a bit more definite – leave out the “I think”.’

  ‘Funny Cheadle didn’t ask what I was doing there.’

  ‘That’s because you got her. He doesn’t care how. That’s what it’s all about, John George. He doesn’t want to know that you were having a kip on a waiting room bench when the lady tries to outsmart us by coming through after we’ve made our enquiries there.’

  ‘I wasn’t asleep in the waiting room,’ Smith said indignantly.

  Best raised his eyebrows enquiringly. ‘Oh?’

  ‘I was in the Great Hall.’

  Best clasped his sides and let out a bellow of laughter. ‘Oh, very discreet, very discreet. You should have put out flags!’

  Quicksilver had gone quiet. They had not heard from him for six weeks. No bombs had gone off at the headquarters of international organizations or newspaper offices during that time. Williamson had returned from his holidays, so the responsibility no longer hung so heavily over Shore and Cheadle.

  ‘Don’t know whether we should just be relieved, or be holding our breaths,’ said Best.

  ‘He might have died,’ said Smith, hopefully.

  ‘Or be locked up somewhere.’

  They exchanged doubtful glances.

  It was the usually optimistic Smith who voiced the mutual feeling: ‘But, I don’t really think so, do you?’

  ‘No.’

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The weather was acting very strangely. One minute the day was bright, warm and still, then the sky darkened abruptly. A spiteful, gusty wind blew up followed by a spattering of large raindrops which turned quickly into a torrential downpour. Just as suddenly, the rain ceased, the skies cleared and the summery sunshine returned. Soon, the cycle began again.

  ‘For heaven’s sake,’ exclaimed Best irritably, glaring at the sky, ‘it’s not April – it’s the beginning of October!’

  He resented the distraction of the ever-changing weather, of having to duck into doorways to avoid a drenching, which would sully the pristine nap of his new, high-crown bowler.

  He had other things to think about. Such as the Chancel case he’d had to shelve when Quicksilver began his antics plus the reason for his current expedition. This was the curious matter of the disappearance of Lady Barncliffe’s diamonds from her padlocked luggage en route between Windsor and Paddington railway stations. Then there was Helen. Mostly, there was Helen.

  Indeed, since he’d first glimpsed her, bent over her drawings in the reading room of the Alexandra Palace, she had scarcely been out of his thoughts. Oddly, he kept reliving the mad dash to the triple lakes and imagining what it would have been like had he not got there in time. The thought was unbearable.

  He was also feeling guilty about not feeling guilty enough about his being so preoccupied with another woman, when his marriage to Mary Jane was looming.

  But it tore his heart that she had looked so sad the last time he had seen her. How had she known that Helen was in the picture again?

  However, the image in his head, as he stepped blithely off the Praed Street pavement, was of Helen and the way they had giggled childishly together when they had been shushed by the old boy in the reading room.

  A deafening male shout: ‘Look out! Look out!’ and a high-pitched female scream tore through his reverie. He looked up to see a manically speeding hansom cab bearing down on him. The driver leaning forward, whip flaying, horse at a frantic gallop, head up, mane flying.

  Best was so transfixed by the sight that the horse was on him before he could react. At the same moment, he felt himself being yanked backwards by his coat tails and collar. The cab raced by within an inch of his nose, and his immaculate jet-black bowler tumbled forward under its wheels.

  As the saving hands released him, Best toppled into the filthy gutter, stunned by the suddenness of it all.

  ‘You ought to be more careful mate!’ shouted the burly station porter who had saved him and who was now stooping to help him to his feet.

  ‘He ought to be more careful!’ exclaimed his middle-aged lady passenger. Her purple brocade bosom was heaving and her matching hat feathers were alive with indignation. ‘What about that ruffian?’ She jabbed her umbrella after the disappearing cab. ‘He didn’t even slow down – quite the reverse! Quite the reverse!’

  She stopped still, turned and looked thoughtfully at Best before saying, ‘For all the world it seemed deliberate.’ She frowned
and enquired politely, ‘Is someone trying to kill you, young man?’

  Best straightened up, glanced ruefully at the crushed pancake that had been his bowler, and admitted, ‘I’m certainly beginning to think so, madam.’

  Indeed, this was the third incident in the last few days which had threatened his life. His assumption, that the other two had been accidents, was now in question.

  The first involved a window box falling from a second-floor Whitehall office, smashing inches ahead of Best and spraying soil and plant detritus all over his gleaming, Derby lace-ups.

  The cause, as the concerned office manager and beadle had explained, was that the metal strut holding the box had rusted, worn thin and snapped – just as Best happened to be strolling by. A regrettable accident for which someone would answer for their negligent inspection.

  The second ‘accident’ had occurred at Farringdon Street underground station, as a train had belched its noisy, smoky way alongside the platform.

  Best was certain that, as the train approached, he had felt an almighty shove in the small of his back. Again, other hands had reached out to save him and, on the crowded platform, he’d been unable to identify the pusher. Indeed, all those around him had seemed only concerned for his welfare, so he had put the incident down to over-eager jockeying for position.

  But these incidents now assumed a more sinister aspect. There had certainly been nothing accidental about that vision from hell he’d seen bearing down on him in Praed Street. The driver had been as purposeful as it was possible to be. But who could want me dead? Best wondered. The fleeting glimpse he had got of the cabby gave him no clue.

  ‘You must inform the police, instantly,’ the purple-bosomed lady insisted, while eyeing him with some suspicion. Clearly, she was wondering what he might have been up to, to deserve such retribution. Was he, despite his smartness, just another ruffian?

  ‘I will, madam, I will,’ he assured her gravely.

  He did too. He told Cheadle.

  To his surprise the old boy took the matter quite seriously.

  ‘We’re a bit short of bilingual detectives since the Turf Frauds,’ Littlechild pointed out sanguinely, before adding, ‘It would reflect badly on old Cheasy if he allowed one of them to come to a grisly end.’

  Smith tendered a more down-to-earth view of the Chief Inspector’s uncharacteristic concern.

  ‘Mum likes you. You got them together. She’d be unhappy if you joined the angels, as she puts it.’

  ‘Ah. Might be some cutting off of the old steak and kidney pie?’

  Smith nodded. ‘Probably. Plum duff, as well,’ he grinned. ‘Too big a price.’

  ‘What I can’t understand,’ Best had said to Cheadle, ‘is not only why and who wants to kill me, but how he knows where I’m going to be?’

  ‘Hmph. That’s simple,’ said the Chief Inspector, emphasizing his words by repeatedly thrusting his sausage-like forefinger at Best. ‘Either ’e’s shadowing you all the time or, more likely …’ He paused, sighed, then said with great seriousness, ‘’e’s one of us.’

  A stunned silence greeted this pronouncement. It was not one Cheadle would make lightly. He hated bent coppers.

  He pulled thoughtfully at the tinning ends of his greying moustaches and enquired, ‘This ’ere h’enquiry at Paddington Station – lead to much, did it?’

  Best stared at him, then shook his head slowly. ‘Nobody there knew anything about it.’

  ‘Right. False call. Like what I said. It’s one of us.’

  Once they had realized that someone was out to end Best’s life, they decided that, apart from checking up on detective office security at the Yard (a joke, if Best had ever heard one), there was little they could do short of keeping him in the office. But he would have to come out sometime. In any case, that wouldn’t make much sense if his enemy was an insider.

  Cheadle did keep Best in for a while, however. Two hours, to be exact. He made Best sit alone in the inspector’s room and instructed him to think about which colleagues he had most offended during his service, the very words ‘which’ and ‘most’ intimating unsubtly that he expected a long list.

  Twice, the old boy popped his head around the door with further advice. One was to say, ‘Don’t just think about the big broils. If the bloke’s a nutter, ’e could ’ave been set off by some little barney.’

  The second time was to advise Best not to limit his list to colleagues of similar rank. ‘Could be someone higher up. You might have done something to make ’im look bad – or not done something you should ’ave.’

  Despite Cheadle’s allusions, he got on well with most of his colleagues – once they’d got over him being a bit flash and foreign-looking. And that didn’t apply so much in the Yard’s Detective Branch as many of the others were second-generation immigrants.

  As for mistakes that would upset senior officers, well, of course there were some, but none which leapt instantly to mind as being likely to put their career in jeopardy.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Cheadle, glancing at his meagre list. ‘Now you’ve started stirring the pudding, you’ll find a plump raisin or two popping to the surface of its own accord.’ That was quite poetic for Cheadle. Clearly there was promise of spotted dick on the menu tonight.

  So Best was let out while his raisins plumped up – but never alone. Always, he must take a second pair of eyes along. Mostly, Smith’s.

  At the moment, Smith’s head had no room for raisins – it was full of aerial balloons.

  Mr Coxwell had lived up to his promise to take the Smith family aloft, and this had turned out to be quite the most exciting event of their lives.

  What’s more, the famous aeronaut had roped in Smith as one of his groundsmen for an extraordinary contest. Eight aerial balloons took off at the same time from eight different points on London’s outskirts, including Crystal Palace in the south and Alexandra Palace in the north. The idea had been to see how far each balloon could travel during the ninety minutes after take-off.

  Smith’s chatter was liberally laced with how they had poulticed valves and the vagaries of air displacement and the weight of the various gases per cubic foot.

  Best had never known the young man so garrulous and enthusiastic, and let him prattle on over their ordinary in the Rising Sun pub, which sat in the entrance to Great Scotland Yard. He was describing the preparations for another forthcoming contest, when Best pulled out his watch and pointed to Smith’s half-consumed pint and half-eaten mutton chop.

  While Smith took the hint, Best seized the opportunity to say, ‘John George, I need your help.’

  The younger man blushed guiltily over his last forkful as he remembered the threat to Best, swallowed and said quickly, ‘Anything. Anything.’

  ‘As you know, I’ve got to recall which officers I’ve offended during my service.’

  ‘Nobody I know of,’ exclaimed Smith loyally.

  Best inclined his head. ‘Come on.’

  ‘Well, not enough to want to kill you,’ Smith grinned.

  ‘Doesn’t have to be,’ said Best. ‘If he’s off his head, it could just be a little thing.’

  ‘Like with Quicksilver?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Could it be Quicksilver?’

  Best shrugged, ‘Possible. But if so, why has there been no hint of it before? Seems to be a different vendetta, somehow.’

  ‘Yeh. I suppose.’

  ‘Anyway, while I’m sending my mind way back to plump up some raisins, if you could start thinking about the jobs I’ve been on with you. The Canal explosion and the murder of Nella and the Princess Alice business.’

  ‘You got up Cheadle’s nose with that one,’ Smith chuckled, ‘making him have a post-mortem.’

  ‘He might be pleased to get his own back by having one on me!’

  Smith didn’t laugh at that. He couldn’t help recalling how he had felt when he had thought that Best was one of the victims of the Princess Alice disaster. This man, who had given him
his chance and who was like a father to him, only more so.

  Smith couldn’t bear the thought of Best dead. He gulped the last dregs of his ale and repeated, ‘Anything.’

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The final letter arrived on the morning of Tuesday 19th October, the day after Alice was hanged.

  It said:

  So here we go for the big one.

  You’d better give it your Best this time. Ha Ha!

  Ill news hath wings, and with the wind doth go.

  With love from Aggy.

  QUICKSILVER

  ‘What in God’s name does that mean?’ groaned Cheadle, shaking his head with irritation.

  ‘Well, it answers one question,’ said Chief Superintendent Williamson. ‘It seems that Quicksilver, and the person who has been trying to kill Ernest, are definitely one and the same.’

  ‘Hmph!’ said Cheadle. ‘Just as I thought.’

  ‘Who is Aggy?’ Williamson asked.

  ‘No idea, sir,’ shrugged Best. ‘Don’t know anyone of that name.’

  ‘Give it some thought,’ advised Williamson. Then he smiled slightly and observed, ‘She’s obviously no beauty or you would have remembered!’

  The inspectors and chief inspectors gathered around his desk exchanged manly grins and winks.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  The chief was keeping it light, but Best was in no doubt how seriously he took the matter. They hadn’t seen Williamson’s lighter side since the Turf Fraud Scandal, two years ago. Hardly surprising that he seemed less trusting, since half his department had landed up in prison for fraud. He was looking older, too, but he was still a handsome, kindly-looking man, with his squarish face and a neatly-trimmed beard. The satin trim on his black jacket gleamed and was set off, as usual, with a rose buttonhole from his own garden.

  ‘How are you getting on with that long list of those you’ve offended?’

  Again, a slight twinkle to show his appreciation of the strain Best must be under. He certainly felt a lot more pressure now it was suspected that he had caused this whole thing – unknowingly or not.