An Appetite for Murder (4 page)

Given that the only other residents of the house were Mrs Embleton, the Allaby sisters, who occupied the ground floor apartments and never went out except to church, and Mrs Parmiter on the second floor, who thought of nothing but her charity work, it was almost certain that the Inspector had come to see Frances, though why he had felt the need to bring a constable with him was a mystery. ‘It seems I have visitors,’ she told Mr Sweetman, ‘but I believe our business is done for today. I will take the case.’

Sweetman heaved a sigh of relief, and handed her a small envelope. ‘The advance payment you require,’ he said. ‘And may I expect a weekly report?’

‘Of course,’ said Frances.

There was a loud thumping sound as two pairs of heavily booted feet advanced rapidly up the staircase, but no sooner had the housemaid’s knock sounded at the apartment door when it burst open, and the policemen entered. Their caped figures were smudged with sleet, and Sharrock’s coarse red face glowed like a beacon.

It was a year since Frances had first met Inspector Sharrock, and he had made a very poor initial impression since he had attempted to bully her father into admitting that he had accidentally poisoned a customer of his chemists shop. The bullying and blustering were, she now knew, the Inspector’s normal mode of address, which he rarely varied and were necessary tactics when dealing with some of the rougher criminal elements of Paddington. In his world, doors were there to be pounded with fists, stairs to be mounted at the double, and rooms to be invaded. He came boldly to the front of Bayswater homes minding nothing about the quality of the residents, and brushing aside any suggestion that he should go humbly to the tradesman’s entrance. Frances had learned to do a little of that herself. During that eventful year, Sharrock, while still remaining convinced that detective work was an unsuitable occupation for females, had grudgingly come to accept that Frances was adept at untangling the knottier problems that he had no leisure to attempt, while she had come to see him as a sound and hardworking policeman, even if he did have the untidiest desk she had ever seen. Sharrock worked long hours either at the station or out on cases, usually pleading that his home, where Mrs Sharrock was busy with the needs of six children under the age of nine, was a domestic pandemonium which he preferred to avoid. Frances happened to know that Mrs Sharrock was in the habit of asking a married but childless sister to look after her noisy offspring while she attended meetings of the Bayswater Women’s Suffrage Society, but had decided not to mention this to the Inspector.

‘Inspector Sharrock,’ said Frances, rising to her feet, ‘if you would grant me a few moments, my client is just leaving.’

‘I don’t think so,’ announced Sharrock, slapping moisture from his cape, ‘or at least, he isn’t leaving alone.’ He fixed Sweetman with a sharp look and gestured to the constable to stand guard by the door.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Sweetman apprehensively, starting to rise from his chair.

‘You are Hubert Sweetman?’ said the Inspector.

‘I am.’

‘Your nephew said you would be here. You’re to come to the station, now.’

‘But I was released – I have all the papers!’ Sweetman exclaimed, delving into his pocket with trembling fingers. ‘Here, I can show you.’

‘Never mind that now,’ said Sharrock brusquely. ‘Hubert Sweetman, I am arresting you on suspicion of murder.’ He nodded to the constable who stepped forward and secured the astonished man. ‘And you, Miss Doughty, should be more careful about who you allow in here.’

‘I don’t understand!’ exclaimed Sweetman. ‘Who am I supposed to have killed? And when? I have been working for my nephew all day and came straight here.’

‘You’re not going to cut up rough, are you?’ warned Sharrock, although nothing looked less likely.

‘No, of course not, I will come with you, but this is all a mistake!’ Sweetman was hustled towards the door, and as he reached it he turned and cried, ‘Miss Doughty, you must help me!’ before he was taken downstairs.

‘I suppose,’ said Frances, ‘it is too much to hope that you will tell me what all this is about?’ She showed Sharrock the envelope. ‘Mr Sweetman’s advance payment,’ she said. ‘He is my client.’

Sharrock raised his eyebrows. ‘Oh? And what did he want you to do?’

‘He is hoping to find his family. He became estranged from them after his conviction for robbery in 1866.’

‘Well, if I was you, I would hand him his money back,’ said Sharrock with a sarcastic grin. ‘He’s using you as a smokescreen. He’s already found his wife, and he’s killed her.’

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

W
hen Sharrock had gone, Sarah, with silent disapproval marked deeply in every line of her face, quickly cleaned the scattered mud spots from the carpet, then went down to the kitchen and made cocoa. All they had succeeded in learning from the Inspector before he departed with his prisoner to Paddington Green police station was that Mrs Susan Sweetman had been found dead at her home, where she lived alone.

As the two women sat thoughtfully before the fire and sipped their drinks, Frances commented, ‘Inspector Sharrock was noticeably reticent about what evidence he has against Mr Sweetman. I am inclined to think that there is none, and all he actually has is suspicion and a likely man near to hand. When hard-pressed, as is usual with him, he will take the easy way, and for the most part he gets good results from this principle. But for all we know Mr Sweetman’s hours of work will give him an alibi for the time of the murder, and come tomorrow he will have been released.’

‘You’ll want to find the son and daughter in any case,’ said Sarah, ‘if only so they can go to their mother’s funeral.’

‘They must surely have been in touch with her,’ said Frances, with a little sigh as she thought of her own absent mother. ‘They will have called on her and the neighbours might know something, or if not they will hear of her death soon enough through the newspapers. Then they will attend the funeral and I will speak to them. But if they had reason not to wish to see their father before, they are unlikely to change their minds now, unless he can be cleared of the murder. I’ll send a note to Mr Gillan so he can place a report in the
Chronicle
.’ Max Gillan was a newspaper correspondent who sometimes supplied Frances with intelligence he obtained from what he called his ‘secret sources’, whom Frances suspected were policemen. The police were officially prohibited from supplying information to the press, but unofficially all pressmen cultivated those officers who appreciated that newspaper reports published during the course of their enquiries might bring in important witnesses. In return, Frances gave Mr Gillan material for his columns, which gave him priority over his rivals. He wrote a regular piece for the
Chronicle
about Frances’ adventures, although he firmly denied being the author of the Miss Dauntless detective stories.

‘They might have gone away, and not get here in time,’ worried Sarah.

‘True,’ said Frances, ‘and I have thought of another difficulty. Benjamin and Mary Sweetman might be so ashamed of their father’s crime that they will not want their connection with him known. They could be living under other names to conceal their identity and decide not to attend their mother’s funeral but pay their respects privately at a later date.’

‘They might come in disguise,’ Sarah mused, with a smile at the prospect of a dramatic unmasking.

‘Well,’ said Frances, ‘Mr Sweetman has paid me a fee and while I wait for his son and daughter to appear I will start the work.’

‘They could have married, or died,’ said Sarah. ‘I’ll go to Somerset House; see what’s in the registers.’

‘And Mrs Sweetman might have made a bigamous marriage,’ Frances observed. ‘A woman in that position might risk discovery to secure a better future. If she used her maiden name of Porter that will cause us some difficulty, as there will be dozens to choose from. I shall go to see Inspector Sharrock tomorrow. We should at least find out when the police think Mrs Sweetman died and when the inquest is to open. Once I know her address we can make enquiries there.’

After composing a note to Mr Gillan, Frances wrote a letter to her solicitor, Mr Rawsthorne, hoping that he might still have his predecessor’s papers relating to Mr Sweetman’s conviction and would be willing to discuss them with her. She then studied the list of people Mr Sweetman had already visited. Any or all of them, she thought, might conceivably know where Mrs Sweetman had recently lived and where her son and daughter were, but had perhaps been unwilling to reveal what they knew to Mr Sweetman. With the death of Mrs Sweetman and the arrest of her husband, they might now speak to Frances.

‘Where will you go first?’ asked Sarah.

‘I think,’ decided Frances, as she sealed the letters, ‘I will start at the beginning.’

Early the next morning, Frances braved gales and cold drizzle to visit the Sweetman family’s old home. The damp air held the promise of a lasting thaw. Everywhere windows were sparkling with a steel-blue frost that she hoped would disperse as the temperature struggled to rise during the day. Walking was difficult, even for someone with Frances’ long stride. The snow that had once lain inches deep had been churned by carriage wheels into dirty brown ridges speckled with soot and tiny ice jewels of yesterday’s refrozen sleet. She was grateful to secure a cab, which crunched its way over the brittle surface. Her destination, Garway Road, ran south from Westbourne Grove, and its houses were neat and plain with two storeys and a basement – the homes of senior clerks, company secretaries and comfortable though not wealthy annuitants.

As Frances had anticipated, Mr Sweetman’s earlier visits had helped prepare the ground for her arrival and the name on her card, which was fast becoming notorious in Bayswater, was enough to ensure her admission to the homes she wished to enter and agreement to interviews.

Frances also carried with her the shocking news of Mrs Sweetman’s murder and the fact that the police were questioning her husband, which was enough to arouse anyone’s interest. She discovered that Mr Sweetman had been painfully honest in revealing the full circumstances of his absence from home for so many years, albeit with earnest assurances that he was an innocent man. In all cases he had been seen by the gentlemen of the house, none of whom had wanted to submit their wives, sisters or servants to the presence of a convicted criminal, however respectful his manners.

The family currently living in the Sweetmans’ old home had been there for eight years and had never met them, neither did they know anyone who might have lived in Garway Road in 1866. Sweetman had spoken to a Mr Willis, a youthful solicitor still making his way up in the world, and his wife now informed Frances that while naturally suspicious of their visitor’s motives, her husband had told him nothing because he had nothing to tell. Frances asked about the previous occupier, but Mrs Willis said that when they had first rented the house – the owner being a gentleman who lived abroad and acted through an agent – it had been empty. The property agent was long since retired.

The neighbours on either side were similarly unhelpful, and none could give any information about the current address of the persons who had previously occupied their properties. Frances, thankful to find that the rain had stopped and detecting a watery glisten on the surface of the melting snow, was just descending the steps of the third house she had visited, and wondering if she might have to call on every one of them in the street, when a figure in a heavy dark servant’s gown, her head and shoulders wound about with shawls, ran down the steps of the Willis house.

‘Miss Doughty! Might I have a word?’

‘Certainly,’ said Frances, pausing to allow the woman to approach.

Close up, it could be seen that the figure was a person of middle years. Her mittened hands smelt as if they had been rubbed with lemon and her cheeks were lined and reddened by frequent closeness to fire.

‘I’m Mr Willis’ cook,’ said the woman, breathlessly, ‘and the maid just told me you were asking after the Sweetmans. I’d been wondering if I ought to write to Mr Sweetman after he came asking questions last time, and then I thought better of it in case – well – I just now heard that Mrs Sweetman is dead and he is suspected so it looks like I was right not to.’

‘That remains to be seen,’ said Frances. ‘Were you living here in 1866?’

‘No, but my father used to deliver fish all round these parts. He’s old now, and his head isn’t what it was, but he might remember something.’ She handed Frances a scrap of wrapping paper with an address. ‘Say that Eliza sent you. My sister Nora looks after him, but he doesn’t get many visitors now, and I’m sure he’d like to talk to you.’

Frances thanked her, and the woman turned and ran back through the snowy puddles, her heels kicking up little spurts of icy liquid. The paper gave the name Jack Jennings and the address of a lodging house in Newton Road, which was just a short walk away. Frances pulled her mantle tightly about her and set off.

A small, thin girl of about thirteen with a face like smudged paper and a ragged excuse for a cap opened the door, and on being told Frances’ business admitted her and asked her to wait while she took her card and the message up to Miss Jennings. There was nowhere to wait except the hall, so Frances stayed there. It was a narrow space innocent of paint or paper, and rarely swept, with a single unlit candle on an iron holder sagging dangerously from the wall. The air was damp, and although the floor was just bare boards, there was a smell of rotting carpets, while a bitter draught under the front door made it seem colder inside than out. After a few minutes, the maid returned saying that Frances could go up to the third floor, and should knock at the door with a number eight chalked on it.