An Appetite for Murder (22 page)

He gave up and signalled to a constable to accompany them. They marched along a narrow, cold corridor of whitewashed brick, towards a stout iron gate. ‘Constable Mayberry will be your guardian,’ said Sharrock. ‘I am not going to leave you alone with a murder suspect without an order from the Queen herself, and even you, Miss Doughty, might find that difficult to obtain.’

Frances glanced at Mayberry who looked too young to be a policeman and rather nervous. His face was blotched with red spots, and his efforts to grow a moustache had not to date been very successful. Sarah could probably snap him in half with one hand.

The gate was unlocked and swung open with a screech and a bang that for so many had spelled the end of their freedom, possibly forever. Beyond this point were hardened murderers, desperate women, and frightened children. The odour was apparent very soon, the smell of unwashed bodies, filthy clothes and the contents of earth closets. The Inspector looked at her. ‘Well, it isn’t a hotel,’ he said, dryly. ‘If it’s too much for you, I’ll have the constable conduct you home.’

‘Thank you,’ said Frances, recalling the time she had discovered a rotting corpse buried in mud and the dreadful decay in the mortuary near Kensal Green. ‘I have experienced worse and will continue.’

‘If you insist, but you must allow us to walk ahead of you. I can’t protect you from the smell but there are sights you should not see.’ Sharrock strode on, and Mayberry, after a moment’s hesitation, followed, with Frances uncomplainingly bringing up the rear.

The tiny lockups boasted few amenities; a bed made of wooden planks with a straw mattress and coarse blanket, a jug of water, and an earth box with a rudimentary seat in one corner. As Frances walked past the gated cells, she saw miserable huddled figures within. The faces that looked up at her, hopeful at first then bowed again as she passed them by, were not vicious or even dissolute. They were faces starved of hope and nourishment and affection, the faces of people who were there not because they were born to be wicked, but because they had been born with very little alternative.

‘Are the prisoners not accorded even the most basic privacy?’ Frances asked, realising that Sharrock had walked ahead to protect her from the sight of someone using the necessary.

‘They are not,’ said Sharrock. ‘Who knows what they would do with it?’

Frances wondered what horrors Mr Sweetman had been enduring in the last week. For fourteen years he had suffered not only the privations of prison but the infamy of being branded a violent criminal, and had hardly won his freedom when he had been plunged once again into the nightmare.

‘How is Mr Sweetman faring?’ asked Frances.

‘Well, he hasn’t given us any trouble, he’s been very quiet, but then his sort usually are.’

‘His sort?’

‘Respectable, then brought low. His nephew has paid for a few comforts, so he’s better off than most, but he doesn’t take much notice of that. Says he didn’t kill his wife.’

‘If you believe he didn’t then you should be looking for the man who did,’ said Frances.

Sharrock grunted and said nothing, but she knew what his reply would be, that he had enough on his plate without chasing murderers when he already had a man under arrest.

Hubert Sweetman was sitting dejectedly on his plank bed. He had been brought a pillow and a warm coverlet and there was a towel draped over the convenient item in the corner so as to conceal as far as possible its true purpose.

‘Visitor for Sweetman!’ said Sharrock and the prisoner looked up. He was haggard, like a man who had scarcely eaten and slept for some while, but his expression brightened when he saw Frances and he lurched stiffly to his feet. She was ushered into the cell and Mayberry accompanied her and stood silently by.

‘Oh Miss Doughty, I have been asking for you and they said you would not be permitted to visit,’ exclaimed Sweetman.

‘That is all resolved now,’ said Frances, and they both sat. Sharrock walked away, but she felt sure he had not gone far.

‘Do you have any news for me about my children?’ he asked. Frances was touched that even in his terrible predicament he was not thinking of himself. Either he was an innocent man, or a very skilled dissembler.

‘I have discovered that they both left home to try and find employment,’ said Frances. ‘Benjamin worked for several years at the Bijou Theatre selling tickets and giving out notices, and then he left. Mary found a respectable situation. Further than that I have no information.’

‘They could do no better without schooling,’ said Mr Sweetman with a little wail of dismay. ‘Benjamin might have gone into business and Mary would have married well. Oh, this is all my fault! I was so determined to see that Edward’s education was not lost that I neglected my own children and made them poor.’

‘You could hardly have known that you would be accused of robbery,’ said Frances. ‘On that subject, I have recently received a letter from Mr Gibson’s brother, Matthew, who said that after the robbery your wife visited him and that she was convinced of your guilt. Do you know why that should have been?’

Sweetman looked confused. ‘I can’t imagine.’

‘I will be interviewing him soon and perhaps he will provide more information. But tell me, Mr Sweetman, and you must be open with me even if you think it will lower you in my opinion, is there a transgression of any kind that you have committed that you have not mentioned to me? Was there a disagreement between you and your wife that could have led to her lack of confidence in you?’

‘Our only point of dispute was my borrowing to help Edward, but while Susan made her disapproval known we never actually quarrelled about it,’ he said. ‘As for transgressions, I do not believe I have ever knowingly done a dishonest thing in my life.’ A small darkness passed across his face. There was something else, Frances was sure of it, and she allowed him time to think. ‘Susan would not have known about company matters, would she?’ he said at last.

‘While you were in custody she did receive visits from old Mr Finn, and Mr Whibley and Mr Elliott, so I suppose they might have spoken about that, but I doubt it. They were mainly there to ensure that she was not in want. They were all convinced that you were innocent.’

‘Were they?’ he said wistfully.

‘Old Mr Finn was very much in your favour, although the trial verdict did shake his certainty, and as you know, Mr Whibley gave evidence as to your good character. Mr Elliott believes you innocent to this day.’

‘I am not so sure of Mr Finn’s confidence,’ said Sweetman. ‘How terrible it would be to admit on a public platform that someone to whom you had given your trust could be such a villain?’

‘I recently saw a letter your wife wrote to your solicitor shortly after you were arrested,’ said Frances. ‘She was most insistent that she did not want to see you again and did not wish the children to see you either. I am sorry, but I must ask you again – is there any reason other than your arrest for the robbery that might have influenced her?’

‘No, none.’

‘I am hoping that Mr Matthew Gibson will be able to tell me something about your wife’s circumstances after the trial. The key to her murder may lie in those years. Do you know anything of her movements or her associates during that time?’

‘I heard rumours, of course,’ he said, ‘many of them. Some were quite disgusting. Other prisoners used to delight in tormenting me with the most horrible stories. Susan was a beautiful woman – anyone might think …’ he gave a little gasp and for a moment he seemed to be choking, almost unable to breathe for emotion. ‘She came into the office to see me sometimes and I could see the way Whibley looked at her. And you know his reputation with women. He did once comment to me that I had a very pretty wife. I thought nothing of it at the time, but since then, I have wondered …’

Frances thought back to the list of mistresses in Whibley’s will. Could one of them have been Mrs Sweetman under another name? But if she had been, why had Elliott as executor not known this? Or had he only communicated with them by letter?

Sweetman suddenly leaned forward and clutched at his hair with both fists. ‘Oh, Miss Doughty,’ he groaned, ‘I would never have harmed her, whatever she did! Even if there was another, she must have been driven to it by circumstances and I would have forgiven her! When I learned of the way she was leading her life at the last, I only wished that I could have seen her and perhaps helped her in some small way. But if she truly believed that I was a heartless criminal she would never have agreed to see me.’ He sat up and wiped his face with a handkerchief. ‘Miss Doughty, there is one thing I must tell you which I have never revealed to another soul!’

So here it was. Frances waited and said nothing, not wishing to interrupt either his thoughts or his resolve.

‘Not long before the robbery I was preparing a report on the company accounts and discovered to my horror that I had made a mistake, a terrible mistake. And almost certainly more than one, perhaps several. Of course I was very distracted at the time, what with my own financial worries and my sister’s grave illness, but I had not thought it would affect my concentration or my work.’ He paused. ‘I assume, Miss Doughty, that you are not familiar with the practice of double-entry bookkeeping?’

‘I used to maintain the accounts of my father’s shop, so I do know something of the principles.’

‘Ah, then my explanation will be simpler. You will know, therefore, that for the most part mistakes in a set of accounts are those of addition only, although sometimes entries can be made mistakenly on the wrong side of the sheet. Even the most meticulous bookkeeper may commit that act on occasion, though it is rare. Unfortunately, once an error is made it is like a stone thrown into a pond, it sends ripples through the books so that when it is finally discovered it is very hard to find its origin. When the accounts do not balance and it is simply a matter of arithmetic – a mistake in adding a long column of figures – one will usually see a difference of a pound, or ten pounds or even a hundred, depending on the column in which the error lies. It is harder when the sum is, for example, ninety pounds, for then you fear that two mistakes have been made, a hundred on one side and ten on the other, so you see only the net result. And of course as soon you see any such thing appearing it is imperative to search out and find the errors immediately and correct them before going any further.’

‘How much was the error in the accounts of the company?’

‘It was,’ and he gave a little whimper, as if the horror was fresh with him still, ‘one thousand, five hundred and twenty five pounds, seven shillings and sixpence.’ His very precision spoke of something that had tormented him for all the intervening fourteen years, and Frances could imagine him lying awake during the long nights of darkness in his cell, exploring the figures in his mind. ‘Imagine, Miss Doughty, multiple errors and no clue as to where they might be! It so appalled me that I thought at first it could not be true, but I checked again and again, and there it was, to the penny!’

‘And you told no one of this? Not even Mr Finn?’

‘No! I dared not! I was afraid of dismissal or demotion, and then where would I have been? How could I have repaid my debts or helped my sister? No, there was only one thing to do; I set to at once to find where the mistakes were so I could correct them before my report was due.’

‘I assume from your distress that you did not find them,’ said Frances.

‘No. The more I looked the more confused I became. And then came the robbery and my arrest. The company must have employed another man to take my place, and then, I fear, the mistakes would have been found and laid at my door. They might even have suspected that I had been taking money from the company and altering the books to cover my thefts. Supposing they had intimated as much to Susan? She knew nothing of business affairs and would have believed them.’

‘But you were never charged with this?’

He shook his head.

‘So it is possible that your successor simply found the errors and corrected them. And if it was merely a matter of number work then no actual money was missing.’

‘Yes,’ he admitted.

‘Could anyone else in the company have been responsible for either the errors or possibly any misappropriations?’

‘Only old Mr Finn was skilled in accounts, and I cannot imagine him doing such a thing.’

‘But Mr Whibley was studying accountancy at the time?’

‘Yes, he was.’

‘And Mr Elliott?’

‘Oh no, he was simply a copy clerk, as was Mr Minster. Mr Browne was engaged in sales, he visited clients. None of those three had any knowledge of bookkeeping.’

Frances considered this new information. ‘Mr Sweetman, we know that the robber let himself in with a key and he also had the key to the safe. Mr Finn and Mr Whibley were both dining at a club that night, and both said they had their keys on their persons. Where were yours?’

‘I had them with me at all times.’

‘Do you think there has ever been an opportunity for someone to take them and have copies made?’

‘I don’t believe so. We were all very careful.’

‘And yet if someone had, the result was that you were the only man suspected,’ said Frances. ‘Every circumstance of the case pointed to you and only you. Why should that be?’

Mr Sweetman, deflated and miserable, had no answer, but Frances thought she knew.

C
HAPTER
S
IXTEEN

F
rances was beginning to see the events of the robbery in a different and far more worrying light. Supposing the arrest of Mr Sweetman had not simply been the unfortunate consequence of his being by chance the only man who had a key and no reliable alibi, but the result of a deliberate act to remove him? What if the errors in the accounts had not been errors at all, but the attempts of another person to cover up acts of embezzlement? Sweetman was adamant that he had told no one of his discovery and had bent his efforts to finding what he imagined to be his mistakes and putting them right, but it was possible that he had revealed by his demeanour that he had noticed something amiss. The guilty party, almost certainly a colleague, would have seen him perspiring over the ledgers, suspected what was afoot, and been prompted to action. The theft from the safe would have thrown matters into further confusion, especially if the amount thought to have been there was incorrect. Any discrepancies would have made it appear that Sweetman had extracted funds from the company, and led to the suspicion that he had carried out the robbery in order to conceal his earlier crimes. Once again, Frances found that her enquiries were being hindered by all the most probable suspects being dead.