An Appetite for Murder (31 page)

‘My clients have been kind enough not to ask for an open letter of apology for publication in the newspapers, and I think that that is as well, as it would only bring the dispute before the public eye once more.’

‘I was not about to offer such a thing,’ said Yeldon, testily, ‘and I stand by what I wrote.’

‘You are not a medical man and your opinion on such issues can have little importance,’ said Frances, ‘but by signing yourself with a pseudonym you left it open to speculation that you were in fact a doctor of medicine. Many people who followed a perfectly safe dietary regime were made unnecessarily anxious and upset.’

He looked unrepentant and Frances sensed that he was about to dismiss her, so she spoke again before he had the opportunity. ‘I assume,’ she said, ‘that your motive in writing the letter was to support the contention of Mr Finn that his weight is not deleterious to his health and offer some reasons to dissuade him from what might be considered dangerous diets.’

‘My motives are my own and I need not comment on them,’ said Yeldon, stiffly. ‘And now I think our interview is over.’

‘I showed the letter to Mr Finn and he claimed not to recognise the hand,’ said Frances.

‘I am his valet and not his secretary,’ said Yeldon. ‘There is no reason for him to know my hand.’

‘But you ought to know that he disassociated himself from the harsher expressions in the letter.’

Yeldon had half turned away and been about to make for the door, but he stopped, and faced her again. ‘Yes, I recall him reading it in the newspapers and he commented as much at the time.’ An expression of concern crossed his face. ‘Miss Doughty, is it your intention to reveal to your clients that I am the author of the letter?’

‘I think it would be best for everyone if I did not,’ said Frances. ‘If I simply advise them that you regret writing it and will not write another that should be sufficient.’

He nodded. ‘Feel free to say so if that will put an end to the matter.’

There was nothing more to be said and they made a frosty parting.

The case closed, Frances decided to pay a visit to Mr Rustrum to impart the news. She might have done so by letter, but she was curious to question him on what advice he had been giving Mr Finn. On calling at his home, however, she found that he had just departed on another lecture tour and was not expected back for a month. She left a note for him and returned home, where she wrote to Dr Adair and Mr Lathwal to advise them of her success and her final fee. She had just completed this when she received an unexpected visitor, Mrs Minster, her garments still reeking of the tobacco and beer and bad pies that were the permanent fragrance of the Cooper’s Arms.

Mrs Minster was a coarse-featured woman who might have been any age between thirty and forty. If she had ever been fresh and beautiful, and that was by no means an impossibility, it was no longer apparent. Time and Mr Minster and the Cooper’s Arms had seen to that. She sat across the little table, and clasped her thick-fingered hands.

‘I suppose when you saw my husband he showed you my grandfather’s will?’ she said.

‘Yes, he did,’ said Frances.

Mrs Minster gave a short, mirthless laugh. ‘He shows everyone that if they ask him where he got the money from. And people believe it. But then people do. Tell them things, and they believe you. Only look angry or sad, and make them feel something, that’s all it needs. Show them a paper, and of course, if it’s written down then it has to be true, gospel if it’s signed. And if the news is very good or very bad, then so much the better, they’ll believe it all the more. People are such fools. Even you, Miss Doughty.’

‘What are you saying, Mrs Minster?’ asked Frances, evenly.

‘Only that there wasn’t any will,’ she sneered. ‘There was never a will. It was all a job, and I don’t know how he fixed it but he did. My grandfather didn’t make a will because he had nothing to leave except a few sticks of furniture that weren’t worth anything and some unpaid rent.’

‘Where did your husband get the money to go into his new business?’ asked Frances. ‘It was two hundred pounds – two years’ salary. Did he rob the office of J. Finn Insurance?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. He goes where he wants and does what he wants. He doesn’t tell me anything and I don’t take much mind of what he gets up to. The less I see of him the better.’

‘What you appear to be saying,’ said Frances, ‘is that the will your husband showed me is a forgery designed to divert suspicion from the fact that he might have got the money by some dishonest means. Do you want me to report this to the police?’

‘Do what you like,’ she said sullenly.

‘If I did, they would want to speak to you about it, and they would ask, as I am doing now, why you have said nothing before.’

‘Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?’ she said, aggressively. ‘What else could I do except stay quiet? It was that or the streets. I could have done
that
once, but I never had the courage. And every time I thought to leave him, I got in the family way. I had five and they all died.’

‘But why are you telling me this now?’

She uttered a long, miserable sigh. ‘Because
I
was a fool, too. A stupid trusting fool! He said that if I told on him and he went to prison then the government would come and take away everything we had worked for, and I’d starve. Well I knew it was true because when Mr Sweetman went to prison all his things were taken away, so I believed it.’

‘That was the law once, but it was changed long ago,’ said Frances.

‘I know that
now
. I read something in the paper that made me think and I asked people, and that was how I found out.’

‘The thing is,’ said Frances, thoughtfully, ‘it will be simple enough to prove that your grandfather never left a will, that can be checked, which will mean of course that the document in your husband’s possession must be a forgery. But it is a will in your name, not his. Although anything you inherited before 1870 became your husband’s property there is no way of proving that he had any hand in the forgery. He might claim to know nothing of it and blame it all on you.’

Frances recalled Mr Minster’s comments on Whibley’s expertise with wills. ‘And if the forger was the late Mr Whibley, which seems very probable, he can say nothing about who employed his services or why. Do you have any more information which might help me?’

Mrs Minster thought for a moment and shook her head.

Frances felt as though she was being confronted with an enormous jigsaw puzzle. There were hundreds of pieces, and she was sure they would fit together to make a picture, but as yet she did not know how they fitted, or what the final picture might be. The one thing of which she felt sure was that a great many pieces were still missing. ‘When your husband told the police that he had been walking down Westbourne Grove on the night of the robbery and saw a light on in the office at half past nine, was he telling the truth?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Do you remember what he was doing that night?’

‘That was years ago, of course I don’t!’

‘Mrs Minster, I believe what you have just told me is very helpful, nevertheless, if I was to pursue it without any other proof than your claim that your husband is to blame it might have serious repercussions on you. All I can do at present is to gather further information to make a good case.’

Mrs Minster considered this and then nodded. ‘All right. I’ve said what I had to say and you can do what you like with it.’ She departed in very ill-humour.

Frances spent the remainder of the afternoon in an appointment with three new clients, who arrived together. None of them, thankfully, wished to engage her in cases of murder, libel, faithless lovers or missing pets. All were members of the Bayswater Ladies’ Suffrage Society and all said they were being followed by a man. He had neither approached nor spoken to them and seemed to offer no threat, but what had been a vaguely uncomfortable feeling had, since Frances’ admonitions on the subject of vigilance, become a sense of alarm that was quickly amounting to terror. The ladies had exchanged information on the subject and they were now all convinced that they were being followed by the same man and not three different ones. Frances received the impression that they would have preferred to have had one follower each, rather than a nuisance who diluted his attentions in a way that was almost insulting.

As she finalised her arrangements to deal with the matter there were two more visitors who were wholly unexpected – Mr Edward Curtis and his uncle Hubert Sweetman, who had just been released from the cells without charge.

Mr Sweetman looked tired and relieved and Mr Curtis thanked Frances rather more warmly than she felt she deserved. There was much shaking of hands, and Mr Curtis even shed a happy tear, a display for which his uncle seemed to have insufficient energy.

There was so much emotion in the air that Frances sent Sarah to make some tea. Mr Curtis had brought a box of dainty cakes and even a posy of flowers, which made the table with its plain cloth look very pretty. They settled to an impromptu party that Frances thought was quite deliberately not taking place at Mr Curtis’ home, probably because of the disapproval of Mrs Curtis.

‘We are so very grateful to you, Miss Doughty,’ said Mr Sweetman. ‘I know that the murderer has yet to be apprehended, and of course that may not even be possible given the fact that no one saw him go to Susan’s home or come away, but at least the law has now taken the view that there is really no case against me.’

‘That has been my contention from the start,’ said Frances, ‘not only from the lack of any evidence but also from my observation of your character. I do not believe you are a violent man, Mr Sweetman.’

‘Inspector Sharrock had to do his duty of course,’ said Curtis, ‘we do understand that, but I noticed that once the courts had decided not to proceed he showed no sign of resentment or frustration – no indication that he disagreed with their conclusion. And I believe, Miss Doughty, that it was you who influenced him in that direction.’

‘Oh you are far too kind,’ she replied modestly.

‘He mentioned you most particularly, not perhaps in the most gentlemanly manner, but his implications were clear to me.’ He beamed at Frances, and Sarah poured more tea as if the pot was a weapon. ‘I ask only one thing. Please tell no one for the present that my uncle has been released. I appreciate that the press will hear of it soon enough, but if he can have just a few quiet days of rest before they do, it would be a blessing. He will not be going back to his old lodgings of course, I have found other suitable accommodation, but you may always write to him at my address.’

‘I entirely understand,’ said Frances, ‘and will not communicate the news until you give your approval. But I must ask, in view of this favourable outcome, what you now require me to do. When we first spoke at Paddington Green you asked me to help, and I agreed to try to discover your aunt’s murderer. Of course, at the time our most pressing concern was the accusation against Mr Sweetman. Now that this is resolved, can you both advise me how you wish me to proceed? I have already uncovered some material that suggests that the conviction in 1866 was unsound. I have also been following clues that I hope may eventually lead me to discovering Benjamin and Mary. If I do, they might have information about Mrs Sweetman’s more recent associates. It will not, I fear, be an easy task or one that can be accomplished quickly, but I will pursue it if requested.’

Sweetman gave a weak smile. ‘It seems like an age since I first sat here and asked you to find my family,’ he said. ‘Please do go on, I miss my children so very much. Why they did not appear at Susan’s inquest and funeral, I don’t know. I fear, I very much fear, that if they are still alive they may be in some terrible situation, a prison or worse. I can understand that they might not want to see me, and there is nothing I can do about that, but that is no reason why they should have failed to pay their respects to their own mother. If you find them, please tell them that I shall always care for them, no matter what they may have done or the circumstances of their lives.’

‘I promise I shall,’ said Frances.

‘I think if you could make that your first concern,’ said Mr Curtis. ‘Now that my uncle is no longer suspected of murder the police will, I hope, be making their own enquiries into that terrible business. And the Inspector did tell me that he was worried that your involvement had placed you in some danger. I would not want to see any harm befall you.’

‘And as to the robbery,’ said Sweetman with a sigh, ‘even if you were to exonerate me, how would that give me back my lost years?’

‘If Benjamin and Mary were to find that you were innocent after all, it might bring them back to you,’ said Frances. ‘You mentioned that Mr Whibley thought that Mr Minster might have been the robber. Did he have any evidence, or was this merely supposition?’

‘No, there was no evidence, or at least none that he mentioned to me. I think it was only because Minster seemed like the type to do such a thing. Whibley asked me if Minster had ever borrowed my keys and I said he hadn’t, and we both agreed that none of us three keyholders had ever let them out of our sight. Minster had never been to my house.’