[The Victorian Detectives 09] - Desire & Deceit

by Carol Hedges

  “I have something for you,” Great Aunt Euphemia continues. “Go and look on the chest of drawers over by the window.”

  Harriet goes. Her eyes light up when she sees the atlas. “For me?”

  “For you. Rose discovered the books when she found your hiding place. I have no need of an atlas now, so I am giving it to you. One day, all the books in the house will be yours as well ~ but don’t tell anybody. Let it be between the two of us. What do you say?”

  Harriet picks up the precious book and hugs it to her starched pinafore’d chest. Her eyes are shining. Her heart is too full to speak. Gratitude fills her up, blossoms inside her. She turns her radiant face to the figure on the bed, who smiles, placing a thin, clawed finger to her lips.

  “I like secrets. And I have kept enough of them in my life. I still do. Now, young Harriet, I think we have said all we need to say, and I hear Rose coming upstairs with my beef tea. It has been a pleasure getting to know you. I expect you will be returning home soon. As will I.”

  Harriet looks perplexed. “But … isn’t this your home?”

  The old woman’s mouth moves. “A different home, I mean.”

  Harriet thinks about this for a bit, but still doesn’t understand. “When you go there, you will take the parrot with you? You won’t let it die?”

  “I promise the parrot won’t die.”

  The housekeeper enters the room with a tray.

  “Harriet is just leaving,” her mistress says. “It has been a most pleasurable visit. Good-bye young lady. I hope you manage to find your pirate ship one day and sail it away to those far-off lands you spoke about.”

  To her surprise, because although she has been told frequently by her father to do it, she has always steadfastly refused to comply, Harriet bobs a curtsey. Then she walks quickly out of the room, carrying her book under her arm. It has not been made explicit, but she senses that this might be the last time she will ever see her great aunt, which also means that she will never again sleep in the small attic room, nor sit on the back step with her supper, perfectly content in her own company, staring up into the night sky. For a moment, the knowledge hurts so badly that she can’t breathe. Despair rises up inside her, but she pushes it fiercely away.

  Harriet enters the sitting room, where her father is standing by the empty grate contemplating something or other. Hanover is pushing his finger through the bars of the parrot’s cage and pulling them back before the bird can peck them.

  Sherborne Harbinger turns round and glares at her. “So, Harriet. You are back. I hope you have apologised to your great aunt for your excessively bad behaviour.”

  “I have apologised,” Harriet repeats mechanically.

  “And what, pray, have you got under your arm? A book? Have you stolen it? I cannot believe, after all you have put us through, that you have further blackened your character! Harriet ~ is there no end to your wickedness?”

  “It was a present,” Harriet protests.

  “I very much doubt that. Indeed, I do. Hand it to me at once. I shall return it to great aunt.”

  Sherborne wrestles the book from his daughter. He opens it. Harriet can see something written on the flyleaf. He reads what is written, and his expression changes. He hands the atlas back to her without saying anything further. They push their way through the hurrying, unsmiling crowds, down the tired dusty streets until they arrive at the Excelsior Hotel, where Sherborne orders the twins to go to their rooms and prepare for dinner.

  As soon as she reaches the sanctuary of her room, Harriet tips the atlas open at the first page, where she reads: ‘A present to dear Harriet from her great aunt, Euphemia Harbinger. The whole world lies before you. Trim your sails and set your sights on the far horizon.’

  Later, when the hotel is quiet, and only the stars and moon are awake, Harriet sits on her bed, turning the pages of her atlas. It shows her where she has come from, but it tells her where she is going. She studies map after map. Then she opens her notebook and begins to write. She writes until she is too tired to write any more. Finally, she puts her head down on the pillow and sleeps.

  ****

  Sleep, however, is the last thing on Lucy Landseer’s mind. Her busy brain is bursting with ideas. Here she is sitting at her little desk in the corner of the living room. Supper has been consumed, and the dirty dishes lie on the draining board, awaiting someone’s attention. Her Cambridge professor is stretched out on the rug, critiquing a manuscript. Every now and then, he utters a sigh and makes a note in the margin. It is hard work being professorial.

  Meanwhile, Lucy is composing her latest article for The Lady’s Home Companion magazine. She has been commissioned to write a monthly series of articles under the generic title: The Lady visits … Each one features a different London location. So far, the Lady has visited the British Museum (three times), Madame Tussaud’s Waxworks Exhibition, the Burlington Arcade and Regent’s Park.

  Now, the Lady is visiting Kensington Gardens, because it is summer and therefore the fashionable champêtre concerts, played by the band of the Household Cavalry, are taking place every Tuesday and Friday between 5 and 6pm. It is a good excuse to let her imagination linger on bright scarlet jackets, luxuriant moustaches, bonny brass buttons and shiny instruments. Lucy may have her own beau, nevertheless, there is something about a soldier ~ well, you know what soldiers are. She also knows what her readers like. They will like this article.

  Time passes in companionable silence, apart from the odd expostulation from the professor. Eventually Lucy sets down her pen and looks round. “There. I have done,” she says. “And now I must write to my first client. The case is proving to be even more intriguing than I first thought.”

  The professor smiles at her. “But you will not tell me what it is about?”

  Lucy tosses her head coquettishly. “Oh no, I cannot do that. It is like a doctor/patient relationship: confidentiality must be observed at all times. But I believe we are in the endgame and once we have proceeded beyond that, well, perhaps I might share some details with you. Especially as you have provided me with the necessary information to fix Mr Brooke ~ I think I can tell you his name. How useful you are!”

  “Your thanks must go to my colleagues in the Law Faculty.”

  “Then I do thank them, most heartily. It is always interesting to learn new facts. And now, if you have finished groaning over your manuscript, perhaps you might turn your attention to the pots in the sink? I shall join you just as soon as I have written my letter.”

  Lucy selects a piece of her special headed notepaper. She takes a fresh pen and, after chewing the end for a couple of seconds, begins to write. As she does so, her thoughts run upon the fates of the four unfortunate women whose lives have become entangled with Mr Francis Brooke. She has read (and indeed written) about faithless dishonourable men. Now she has encountered a real live one and finds him to be far nastier in fact than fiction.

  Once she has finished her letter and sealed the envelope, she goes over to the window and leans out, taking a deep breath of warm night air. The window is latched open. The sounds of a city settling into itself filter into the room. Out there are millions of people, she thinks. Some happy, some desolate. She hears a bird carolling its evening song to the world. In the tiny pantry, the professor is clattering the pots and humming happily to himself. Lucy draws down the blind. There is nothing I would change about my life, she thinks. Nothing at all. Not even if I could.

  ****

  Parliament is rapidly heading towards its summer recession. This means that everything slows down, everything feels looser at the seams. There are more jokes in the House, more bonhomie and back-slapping, longer times spent in the tea-rooms, less antagonism and name-calling. Everyone has their sights set on the break. Trips to Europe are discussed, renovations to country piles put forward, lists of house guests are exchanged. The odd book project is floated. Minds are focused on leisure and relaxation.

  The Honourable Thomas Langland’s mind is focused on
Spartacus and his plans for the horse’s future. This morning he is off to Knightsbridge, where he is meeting some like-minded friends at Tattersalls to view the horses for sale and discuss equine matters, leaving the business of his parliamentary office in the hands of his clerk (whose name he has still not bothered to remember).

  Thus, the Replacement finds himself unexpectedly sitting behind the big mahogany desk, working his way steadily through two piles of papers, consisting of Hansard reports and letters from constituents. He has been charged with annotating the first pile, producing a summary of every debate, and dispatching a suitably concerned missive expressing sympathy in response to the second pile ~ which he is instructed to sign in the name of the MP, who hasn’t and doesn’t intend to, read them.

  Time passes. The Replacement feels his concentration flagging. There is only so much insincerity you can fake before it becomes tedious, and your wrist starts to ache. He decides to get up and take a turn about the room. Whilst turning, he notices that one of the portraits is hanging slightly askew. He goes over, intending to straighten it. He has the sort of obsessive mind that can never bear to be in a room with crooked pictures, chairs not set straight to a table, and cutlery at an angle. In moving the picture to the left, he feels the edge of the frame scrape against something. Intrigued, the Replacement shifts it carefully back again, and sees a small wall-safe. The door has been left slightly open in a ‘looser at the seams’ way.

  The Replacement goes into the outer office and returns with his high stool. He climbs onto it, reaches into the safe and removes a pile of letters, which he places on the Honourable Thomas Langland’s desk. He sits back down, picks up his quill, because he does not feel secure without something to hold in his hand, and begins slowly and carefully to peruse the correspondence, setting aside one letter, then the next. As the pile diminishes, the frown between his brows deepens as the realisation dawns on him exactly what he is looking at. He had thought the answer to his friend’s disappearance lay in the locked drawer in the mahogany desk. He now realises how wrong he was.

  Here are letters from builders and developers asking Langland to use his influence as an MP to get them planning permission for various works. The letters offer rewards, some of them financial. Other letters convey the deep gratitude of the sender, clearly indicating that Langland has acceded to their requests. Some letters are from other MPs, expressing thanks to their esteemed colleague for putting them in the way of a nice house, or an opportunity to acquire a property at cost price for a family member.

  One very poignant letter comes from a constituent, pleading with him not to sell the farm and the land that has been in his family for centuries. It is ill-spelt and on poor-quality notepaper, but desperation leaks from every line. The Replacement cross-references it to a letter from a developer, thanking Langland for arranging the sale of the farm and land and promising to give him first refusal on one of the fine brand-new houses to be built. The developer’s name is Wm. Boxworth ~ a name that is familiar to him, though he cannot quite place it.

  The Replacement racks his brains. Where has he seen that name before? Then he recalls where: on the hoarding surrounding the building site where his friend’s body was discovered. He riffles through the rest of the correspondence and finds two more communications. Both are copies of confirmatory receipts of large sums paid by certain MPs to Mr Wm. Boxworth in return for shares in various developments in London and other major cities.

  He is initially puzzled why Langland should have made copies of these receipts, which do not refer to him specifically by name, but after thinking about it for a while, he realises the copies are Langland’s security. If, at any future time, an attempt is made to discredit him in the House, or elsewhere, he has only to hint at the existence of these copied letters, and he has a ready-made cohort of terrified MPs who will do all in their power to brush scandal away from his door because if they don’t, it will also wash up at their door and ruin them as well. It is cunning and clever and shows a degree of ruthless connivance that goes way beyond his comprehension.

  So finally, he understands what his friend was hinting at. The scale of corruption and cronyism is laid bare before his eyes. Langland is awarding lucrative building contracts in return for financial reward. He is also using his influence to act as an introductory bridge between certain opportunistic MPs and unscrupulous developers. Again, in return for money or favours. This is what his friend must’ve discovered. And somehow, Langland found out that he had discovered it. And that is why he died, because Langland’s reputation and career are things he would wish to preserve at all costs. Even, it appears, at the cost of another man’s life ~ but a man who was only a parliamentary clerk, so not of any value in the great scheme of things.

  The Replacement suddenly feels cold, overwhelmed by the immensity of what he has discovered and the implications. His hands start shaking. The quill falls from his fingers, stuttering black ink over the pile of correspondence. Frantically, he grabs the blotter and tries to mop up the mess, but to no avail. The evidence cannot be erased. The moment Langland looks into the safe and sees the ink-stained letters, he will know that somebody has perused them, and it will be a matter of seconds to work out who.

  Now he is in the same position as his friend. His life stands in the balance. A deep pit has opened at his feet, and he is teetering on its edge. He shuffles the letters together into a pile and replaces them in the wall-safe, making sure, as sure as he can, that they are in exactly the same order, and the safe is open at the exact angle he found it to be originally.

  The Replacement takes his clerk’s stool back into the outer office. He moves with difficulty, as if he is under water. He is in shock. When he finally goes back to Langland’s desk, he sits hunched forward, trying to fit everything together. There is a tightness in his chest. A sense of vertigo. The words he is supposed to be writing dance in front of his eyes.

  Finally, he can stand it no longer. He rises and rushes out, hatless, into the street, the air closing around him. The streets are thick with people. They loom at him, and then fall away. He feels as if he has something growing inside, waiting to be hatched. Reaching a deserted back-alley, he leans over and vomits next to the wall.

  ****

  A few hours later, still on the same sunny summer afternoon, we find Miss Lucy Landseer, author and private detective, accompanied by Miss Rosalind Whitely, spinster and client. They are on their way to pay a morning call upon a third lady. They are wearing their finest clothes (in the case of Rosalind, her finest mourning clothes), because it will be important, if judged by first appearances, as many frequently do, that they appear credible.

  The cab drops them on the outskirts of Belsize Park. Lucy consults her map and a small visiting card, then directs them up Haverstock Hill. They turn left by a small stationery and tobacconist shop and enter a pleasant road with houses set back from the pavement. The road is planted with trees. They stop outside Number 12.

  “Well, here we are. You know what you have to do?” Lucy asks.

  “Oh yes,” Rosalind nods. Her mouth forms a determined line. She clutches her bag a little more firmly.

  They open the gate, mount the four steps. Then, taking a deep breath, Lucy Landseer rings the doorbell.

  The door is opened by a small maid of all work, who gazes wonderingly at the two smartly clad young women. Lucy favours her with her most charming smile, the one that gets her admitted to so many places where she should not, by rights, have entered.

  “We have come to see your mistress. Here is my card. I believe she is expecting us. Please announce us, if you’d be so kind.”

  The maid trots off, carrying the card cautiously. They step into the hallway. Lucy mentally makes a note of the dark green wallpaper, the small table with its silver filagree basket for visiting cards, the green and black patterned floor tiles and elaborate overmantel with gold framed mirror. Everything is slightly old-fashioned, but of good quality.

  The maid returns. The t
wo visitors are shown into a drawing-room, where they find Miss Amelia Ferry, her walking cane at her feet, sitting in a dark red upholstered chair, an open book on her lap. A tapestried fire screen and an embroidered runner along the dark marble mantelpiece bear witness to her sewing skills. There is a piano, a lacquered desk, and several sofas. The window is heavily draped with muslin, giving the room a shaded atmosphere.

  As they enter, a small brown and white terrier gets up from its spot on the hearthrug, stretches its back legs, then trots over to make their acquaintance. Lucy immediately squats down and fondles its soft ears. She is very fond of dogs. Real and fictitious. The dog licks her hand enthusiastically. It is watched from a distance by the invalid.

  “Oh, what a lovely little dog,” Lucy smiles, glancing up from her position on the floor. “What is her name?”

  “Jess. She is my constant companion. I do not enjoy the best of health and am obliged to spend long periods resting. My little dog makes such times more endurable. Miss Landseer and Miss Whitely, please sit down. I confess to being a little at a loss as to why you are paying me a call. I do not recollect meeting either of you before. Do you belong to some local Church charitable committee? Have you come to appeal for a donation?”

  “No, we are not from any such organisation,” Rosalind says.

  “But we have come to appeal to you,” Lucy adds. “Let me explain. We believe you are acquainted with a certain gentleman called Mr Francis Brooke?”

  The invalid’s cheeks colour up. “Yes, I know him. Why do you ask?”

  Lucy gives Rosalind Whitely a meaningful go-on-tell-her glance. Rosalind digs in her bag and proffers a photograph. “Perhaps you recognise Mr Brooke? He is my stepfather. The lady with him was his wife ~ my mother. She is dead now.”

  “I noticed that you were in mourning, Miss Whitely. I am so sorry. To lose a parent is a tragic event. I lost both of my dear parents to cholera when I was very young. They were missionaries in India.” The invalid stares down at the photograph, a puzzled frown gathering between her brows. “When did you lose your mother, Miss Whitely?”