Ann Granger (31 page)

‘I arranged he should come at midnight, bringing his dead child. My niece was restless following the birth. Dr Barton feared the onset of childbed fever. He’d left laudanum for her. I gave her some that night and she soon fell asleep. As for the nurse.’ Christina Roche smiled. ‘Believe me, I know how such women are. I took her a bottle of brandy, laced with a little laudanum, and said she should keep it by for medicinal purposes. Her eyes lit up when she saw it. I knew she’d drink herself senseless as soon as my back was turned.

‘Sure enough, I went up to the nursery at midnight and found the woman snoring in a chair and the bottle half empty. I took the infant, undressed it and wrapped it in a shawl. Then I went downstairs and met with Brennan, as arranged, in the garden. I handed over Lucy’s baby and he gave me his dead child. I took the dead one back upstairs and dressed her in the nightgown and cap I’d taken off Lucy’s child. To my eye they looked exactly the same.’

‘But not to a mother’s!’ I exclaimed. ‘Lucy knew at one glance that wasn’t her baby.’

‘That was annoying,’ Miss Roche agreed. ‘But Dr Barton, who is an old fool, only took one look at the dead infant and was happy to sign a death certificate. He declared Lucy to be raving as a result of fever; her insistence the dead infant wasn’t hers a delusion. If the nurse noticed anything she was not such a fool as to speak up. She knew she had been drunk.’

She made an impatient gesture. ‘I hoped, we all hoped, that Craven would never return from the East. If some fever took him off, and the baby had been disposed of, then it would be as if this foolish, ill-advised marriage had never taken place. But no, you had to meddle and seek out the rat-catcher’s wife, after bringing your policeman friend here to ask his impertinent questions. And now my brother is here and tells us James Craven has vanished from Canton and might well be in this country!’

She fell silent, glaring at me.

‘James Craven is in England?’ I exclaimed. ‘Has Lucy been told?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Miss Roche bitterly. ‘
I
should not have told her … nor would my brother. We should have sought out Craven and bundled him off East again. My niece would have been none the wiser. But your Inspector Ross would have it that my niece must hear the news! What good has that done? Lucy is weeping one minute with joy and the next with despair because he hasn’t shown his face and she’s imagining all sorts of accidents. Suppose Craven arrives on the doorstep and Lucy leaves us and sets up a home with him? They may have more children. Everything generations of Roches have worked for and achieved will pass into the hands of an unworthy, gambling idler and any children he may spawn. Once Craven had been sent off to China, and Brennan had taken away the child, I believed we’d settled everything. Now everything is as bad as before, if not worse.’

‘And as part of settling everything, you killed the rat-catcher,’ I said. ‘I doubt even you can claim a higher power directed your arm.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Miss Roche simply. ‘I don’t deny I arranged for him to take the child. Why should I kill him? He had done excellently.’

We had both of us been so intent on one another that we had remained unaware of anything else. Now, suddenly, the door was flung open and Lucy Craven erupted into the room. Her face was red with rage and her eyes blazed. Her fair hair had tumbled free of the plaited twist at the back of her head, and fell in disarray on her shoulders.

‘I heard!’ she shrieked. ‘I heard you tell Lizzie all of it! I came upstairs to tell Lizzie that James was back in England, and I heard you both talking in here. I listened and I heard it ALL! You lied to me! You took my baby and you gave her to that dreadful man! You gave her to
him
!’

She rushed forward and scooped up a pair of scissors lying on a worktable. With the blades held like a weapon in her hand, she flung herself on her aunt.

Miss Roche was so surprised that she stumbled back. I leapt at Lucy, seized her arm, and cried, ‘No, Lucy, don’t!’

I wouldn’t have believed that child-like frame now in frenzy could be so strong. We wrestled for what could only have been seconds, but seemed much longer. More than once the open blades flashed dangerously close to my face. Then, without warning, hands appeared to grasp Lucy’s shoulders and jerk her backwards.

Lucy squealed. The scissors clattered to the floor and I grabbed them before she could seize them again. I saw that the person, who held Lucy tightly and in a most professional way, was Lefebre. The others had followed him into the room and all crowded by the door: Charles Roche, his face foolish with dismay and surprise. Phoebe, white-faced, her hand clasped over her mouth. As before, Williams had come running and Higgins, too.

Faced with the new arrivals, Christina Roche regained her self-control. ‘Well, Miss Martin,’ she said. ‘Now perhaps you are satisfied and see for yourself who stabbed Brennan.’

And she pointed at her niece.

Lucy sagged in Lefebre’s grip and began to sob softly, shaking her head. He led her to a chair and she sank down on to it. ‘No…’ she repeated between gasps, ‘
No, no
…’

Before anyone else could reply I spoke as loudly as I could. I wanted them all to hear me. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Lucy didn’t kill the man. But you did. To try and blame an innocent girl is cowardly as well as wicked.’

I turned to Charles Roche. ‘Your sister arranged to exchange Brennan’s own dead child for Lucy’s living baby and to take Lucy’s child to a workhouse is London. Lucy heard your sister confess to it. No wonder she flew into a rage!’

I turned back to Christina Roche. ‘You asked me why you should kill the rat-catcher. My guess is that he asked for more money. Or you felt you could not trust him to be silent forever. He knew the whereabouts of the child. At some later date he might seek out the infant and produce her. You had to silence him. What I don’t understand is, why didn’t you kill him that first night I was here, when you met him in the garden? Because you did meet him, didn’t you? I saw you from my window, and his little white dog.’

Her eyes glittered with hatred. ‘Well, Miss Martin, is there nothing you don’t know? As soon as I heard Brennan had returned to the district, I did indeed send Greenaway to him with a request to come and destroy a rat. It was an agreed message between Brennan and myself. I went out into the garden after everyone, as I thought, would be asleep, and there he was. He was a curious fellow but reliable in his rough fashion. I met him only so that he might confirm he had taken the child to a workhouse, as arranged. I did not, for all your impudent theorising, have it in my mind to kill him.’

‘Not at that moment,’ I retorted. ‘You hadn’t come armed because you only came to hear if he’d carried out your horrible plan. But when he asked for more money, you told him you would meet him secretly in the garden the next day and pay him more.’

‘Pay him more…’ murmured Miss Roche thoughtfully. ‘The man was out of his head. Did he think I was so stupid that I could be blackmailed by a
rat-catcher
? That he could threaten me with impunity? I am a
Roche
!’

Lucy was crying softly, hugging herself and rocking to and fro. As before, Williams came forward to put an arm round her and lead her away.

I took up my accusation. ‘You lay in wait with a knife taken from the hall table and you stabbed him! But your clothes were blood-stained. You ran upstairs and changed into another gown so that when you appeared in the garden after Lucy had found the body no one should see the telltale bloodstains that showed you’d already been near the body. When you went to tell your sister of the murder, she was so upset she probably didn’t notice you didn’t wear a gown of the material she and you had agreed for the day. But later she might have done. Dr Lefebre and I should certainly have observed you wore different gowns, when we next saw you. So you persuaded Phoebe that you should both wear mourning black for the rest of that day. I thought it was excess of formality that had made you do it. But you wouldn’t have done that for a casual labourer, of course you wouldn’t. I should have realised at once the black gowns were meant to mislead. That night you – or perhaps Higgins who is your creature – took the stained gown to the foreshore and burned it. I saw the fire.’

‘Do you, I wonder, ever sleep, Miss Martin?’ asked Christina Roche with what sounded like genuine curiosity. ‘Or are you like the dog guarding Hades, one of whose three heads is always awake? I thought my brother had sent Lefebre to spy on us but it seems he also sent you.’

‘No,’ I denied. ‘I don’t know the reason for Dr Lefebre being here, but I only came to be companion to Lucy.’

‘Then you have far exceeded a companion’s duties!’ she replied coldly.

I ignored the jibe. ‘When you came in just now and found me searching in your wardrobe, you knew at once I’d worked it all out, that I’d probably already checked your sister’s wardrobe, and was now looking to see if any corresponding gown was missing from yours. There is one gone, the tartan one. Where is it, Miss Roche? If I’m wrong, then produce it.’

Christina Roche was silent, her cold slate eyes expressionless.

Lefebre spoke up. ‘I suggest we go downstairs, with the exception of Miss Roche. You will not object, ma’am, if we lock you in your room for the next half-hour or so? Just while we discuss all this.’

‘How good of you to ask,’ remarked Christina Roche drily. ‘Are you, I wonder, Doctor, as polite with the unfortunates incarcerated in your clinic?’

Higgins’s harsh voice broke in. ‘I’ll sit here with madam. You can lock me in too. Miss Christina shouldn’t be left alone. It’s not decent.’

‘It might not be a bad idea to secure Higgins,’ I said. ‘Or she might let Miss Roche out.’

Miss Roche sat down on a small stool and folded her hands composedly. ‘Do as you wish!’

The two women were duly locked in after some demur on Charles Roche’s part. We then all traipsed back downstairs to the drawing room. A maid was sent to find Ben and Sergeant Morris who were, with luck, still on the premises.

Charles Roche spoke. ‘Do you know anything of this, Phoebe?’

Phoebe shook her head so hard that her false ringlets bounced around and threatened to detach themselves.

‘I didn’t know Christina had, had killed Brennan…’ she whispered. ‘I knew she’d killed the cat Mr Beresford gave Lucy. She believed it wrong that a married lady should receive a gift from an unrelated gentleman.’ Phoebe moved forward, wringing her hands. ‘She did tell me what she’d done with the baby, but only after she’d done it and Brennan had left the district. What could I do? She was proud of having arranged things so well … Christina said we are a respectable family and James Craven’s child must be … got out of the way. I thought it wrong but Christina was so sure … I was so afraid of the scandal if I told anyone. But as for killing Brennan, I swear … I knew nothing … I can’t believe that’s it’s true!’

‘Respectability…’ Roche said heavily and followed it with a disgusted snort. ‘What my sister
calls
respectability has always been her guide … her master! She … she was always difficult, obsessive about the good name of our family and our family business. She has always held strong views and can become violently agitated if crossed. She made my life in London quite intolerable so I arranged for her – and for you, Phoebe – to live here quietly.’

He looked at me in a way that was almost comical in its attempt to make all he said seem reasonable. ‘I thought it best, and Dr Lefebre here knew of a suitable housekeeper. Williams had worked for him in his private clinic for the insane as a nurse before she married. Now she was widowed and seeking a position. She seemed ideal. Not of course that my poor sister is mad. At least, not as it’s normally understood.’

‘What you are telling me,’ I said quietly, ‘is that you – and you, too, Dr Lefebre – knew Miss Roche to be unstable. You sent her here with Miss Phoebe for company and Williams to be her keeper. Before Williams came, Higgins probably filled that role. And then you sent poor little Lucy Craven here for her lying-in. How
could
you?’

Roche stared at me, still bewildered, and spread out his hands in a hopeless gesture. ‘But what else could I do? I’m unmarried. I couldn’t have my niece giving birth in my house! My household was not adapted for – for newborn infants and women lying-in. I had no idea that my poor sister’s obsession would lead her to commit such dreadful acts. I swear this to you.’

‘Lucy should have been in her own home with her husband!’ I informed him.

‘But I had sent him to China,’ said Roche and gazed at me pleadingly as if I really could be made to accept his explanation. ‘He was so unsuitable. The whole marriage was unsuitable. I had been forced to allow it. The scandal of my niece’s condition, her being with child … She had to be married but…’ His voice tailed away. ‘We have always been a
respectable
family,’ he finished, but he sounded like a man lost in some desolate wilderness with no idea which way to turn.

‘Well, this is where your respectability has got you!’ I said unkindly. I had no more time for him or for any of them and certainly no sympathy.

He drew in a deep breath and straightened up, attempting something of his former dignity and authority. ‘You are right, of course, Miss Martin. Respectability made a kidnapper and, you say, a murderer of my poor sister. Long before that it had confused and distorted her view of life. I feel responsible, of course I do. I shall make every effort to see that – that Inspector Ross understands, and the law understands that my sister is not fully responsible for any of her actions.’

‘What actions might those be?’ demanded Ben loudly from the doorway.

Sergeant Morris loomed up behind him. Before Roche could answer, I burst out impatiently, ‘Your sister, your sister! The law must deal with her as it sees fit. Your concern should be for that hapless baby!’

Chapter Twenty-one

Inspector Benjamin Ross

I RETURNED to London with Sergeant Morris after we had seen Miss Roche taken into custody. As you can imagine, this wasn’t achieved without some vigorous opposition on the part of Charles Roche who refused to accept his sister be treated as a common murderer … as if there were an uncommon kind. But Mr Roche was finding it difficult to accept that his sister could be any kind of murderer. There had been some mistake, he kept insisting. His sister’s mind had given way under all the stress and she was the victim of her own derangement. His good friend Lefebre the mad-doctor, an acknowledged expert, agreed people suffering from mental illness often made extraordinary and untrue claims, or related wild stories sprung from their diseased fantasy.