Dear Laura (21 page)

‘You needn’t fret,’ Lintott replied, ironic. ‘It’s the fools and the unfortunates that get caught. The clever ones, like you, will be living in clover while I’m still plodding the streets!’

M
R
R
ICE
seemed to exist in a world of lubrication. Macassar upon his hair, to conceal the grey and coax a sleek curl on either side of his forehead; wax on the upward-turned moustaches; and a gloss of skin bestowed only by nature. His hands moved slowly and restlessly together as though a modicum of oil lay
perpetually
in his palms. His voice and manner were exceptionally smooth, and he even favoured the softer fabrics – being very emerald and magnificent in a velvet jacket, at six o’clock of an evening.

Lintott disliked him at sight, concealing his reaction as always behind a plain good-natured countenance and opaque eyes. The drawing-room was as hushed and voluptuous as Mr Rice, and the inspector’s vibrant tones were muffled in plush curtains and hangings. On the walls hung portraits of innocent, nubile girls in Greek draperies, bending over doves and flowers and sea shells. And Lintott’s heavy boots drowned in thick carpet.

Something too – soft – here, altogether, he thought. Something nasty. Something I don’t care for at all.

Beating down the atmosphere, like a man beating off a
suffocation
of feathers, Lintott came to the point.

‘I understand that you paid a Mrs Molly Flynn to deliver a packet of letters to the late Mr Theodore Crozier.’

Mr Rice fiddled with his rings, smile set and eyes careful, and did not answer.

‘I want to know about it,’ said Lintott. ‘I shall know about it, make no mistake.’

‘Difficult, my dear sir,’ Rice replied, watching him. ‘A matter of considerable delicacy.’

‘I’m delicate,’ said Lintott doggedly, ‘as delicate as anyone
could wish. I’ve got secrets locked up here,’ pointing to his knobbed forehead, ‘as wild horses wouldn’t drag out. I’m
making
no trouble unless I have to, and then I’ll show you what trouble is, my friend.’

‘Do sit down,’ Rice murmured. ‘My dear sir, sit down, pray. This will take some explanation and some time.’

‘I have a mort of time,’ said Lintott, selecting a high-backed chair, less upholstered than the rest.

Mr Rice found the truth an unsavoury morsel in any event. As a meal it became an ordeal of tortuous proportions. But he began circuitously, creeping further and a little further towards the purpose of the inspector’s visit.

‘I am fortunate, sir, in having some private means. I am not rich,’ he added quickly, spreading out his arms to show Lintott how empty they were though clad in fine velvet. ‘Not rich at all, my dear sir. But I have means, and I have – I say this with due modesty – I have a
heart
.’

Lintott’s nostrils lifted. It might have been the man’s scent, it might have been instinct. It might have been both.

‘I look around me,’ purred Mr Rice, ‘at the distressing
conditions
in this Glorious Age. The Queen, my dear sir …’

‘God bless her,’ said Lintott reverently. ‘God bless her.’

‘… indeed. I go on these knees every night, my good sir – I am a religious man – and I pray that she be spared to us for many, many years.’

‘So you’re well-lined, religious and warm-hearted,’ Lintott summed up briskly. ‘A philanthropist, in fact. You are telling me you are a philanthropist?’

‘You put it so well, Inspector. In my humble way, sir, I do what I can.’

‘Fetch little children in off the street, perhaps? Girls?’

Mr Rice flung up his hands in outrage.

‘You mistake me, I can see. If you will forgive me, Inspector, you deal with the saddest and darkest side of Human Nature. And, oh, how sad and dark our Natures can be! Dear, dear! No, no. Let those who will – and they
do
,
you know and I know – let
them
take advantage of a child’s purity. None of that here, Inspector. None of that. I swear upon my mother’s Holy Memory
and this …’ – and he laid his fingers upon a very large Bible – ‘… the Holy Book. I swear it, I should take it as quite a favour if I was struck down for telling a lie!’

‘All right, all right,’ said Lintott, sick of him, ‘then let’s get down to what you
don’t
want to swear to. That’s what I’m after.’

‘I have nothing to be ashamed of,’ said Rice, after a pause. ‘I go about the highways and byways, as did Our Lord. I walk the Embankment and look under the Arches of a night-time, and I console and relieve the Dregs of Human Nature.’

‘Something for nothing?’ Lintott asked, knowing.

Mr Rice’s face was as mild and open as that of an honest clergyman.

‘I take in delinquent boys, my good sir, and offer them a home. It’s not all like this,’ he said, indicating the over-furnished room. ‘This is my part of the house. But they are very comfortable, and they join me here of an evening …’

‘When the visitors come?’

‘Well, I do try to introduce my boys to people of substance who can help them make their way in the world. They move on, you know, as they get into their twenties. I can only take a dozen at a time, and when a boy reaches maturity he naturally wants to make his own way. I give them a Bible when they leave me, Inspector, and a little present of money.’ Lost in the image he had created, Mr Rice became rapt. ‘I’ve seen a boy stand here with the tears pouring down his cheeks, thanking me. I do give them a Bible,’ he said anxiously. ‘I’ve got a cupboard full of them that I can show you.’

‘Don’t trouble yourself to open it,’ said Lintott. ‘I know the truth when I hear it. I’ve had such a lot of practice, you see. So you take these delinquent lads, as nobody cares about …’

‘And nobody does,’ Rice interrupted, with a glint of his black eyes. ‘If I didn’t take them in, who would?’

‘There are benevolent institutions,’ said Lintott stoutly,
knowing
there were not enough.

‘My dear sir, a Drop in the Ocean of Want! Why, they die – not just the boys, but men and women and babies too – die not a stone’s throw from restaurants where a gentleman thinks
nothing
of spending a couple of sovereigns on his dinner. They die
unwanted and ragged with their stomachs empty – my boys don’t!’

‘You needn’t offer to show me your kitchen, neither,’ said Lintott drily. ‘I believe you feed them, too. And clothe them. They wouldn’t catch any benefactor’s eye if they was dirty and ragged, would they?’

Mr Rice pondered over this remark, subdued.

‘So Mr Theodore Crozier was a benefactor, was he? Where did you dig him up?’

‘Oh, we’ve been good friends – I think I could call the
gentleman
a friend – for years and years.’

‘Don’t tell me you were at Rugby together. I shan’t believe that!’

A curious dignity possessed the small man.

‘I was a Foundling, my dear sir,’ he said. Then he lapsed back again. ‘Any schooling I had was in the School of Life, and with His Divine Light ever upon me!’

And he cast both moist eyes to the ornamented ceiling.

Lintott gave a snort of disgust.

‘So you reckoned to be friendly with Mr Crozier. A strange sort of friend, Mr Rice, to foment a scandal and threaten to ruin him.’

‘Scandal? I was trying to
prevent
scandal, my dear. I have the reputation of this charitable house to uphold! And I did ask Mrs Flynn to be particularly discreet.’

‘She did her best, but I was after her, you see. Now you must have read about the coroner’s case, and you never came forward with the information, though I understand that some letters are still in your possession. What were you hoping for? To wait until the scandal died down and then put a bit more pressure on Mr Crozier’s wife or brother, for instance? Hush money?’

Mr Rice pursed his lips and shrugged expressively.

‘Best let sleeping dogs lie, my dear sir. Best let them lie, believe me.’

Lintott considered him thoughtfully.

‘Very well, Mr Rice, I think we understand one another. So you are a philanthropist, and the late Mr Crozier was a
philanthropist
.
He visited you, or visited this establishment, for several years – no doubt introduced by other philanthropists?’

Mr Rice nodded, and breathed on rosy fingernails.

‘There are a number of gentlemen very high in the City, and in the Professions, who patronise my boys and seek to alleviate their unfortunate lots. I never mention names. Love vaunteth not itself, you know. They prefer their benevolence to be of the anonymous variety.’

‘I’m sure they do. Now when did he part from the usual conditions of philanthropy, in a manner of speaking?’

‘Well, it was this way – I hope I express myself with sufficient delicacy, and that you don’t misunderstand my meaning …’

‘Get on with it!’

Mr Rice traced a pattern on the carpet with the toe of his moroccan slipper.

‘Mr Crozier always took a
general
interest in my boys, until I found Billie Mott. He took what you might call a
particular
interest
in him. “Billie, mark my words,” I said to him many a time, “Mr Crozier will see you right!” Billie’s a very bright boy indeed, quite a cut above the usual. Nicely spoken and knows his letters. Mr Crozier had it in mind to make him a clerk, and Billie was very fond of him. But then there was the suggestion, in a most underhand way, of removing him from my protection and setting him up in his own rooms. And then I found the letters that Mr Crozier was writing to Billie, and I realized that All was Not Well.’ He paused. ‘Would you like a word with Billie while you’re here? It’s of no consequence if he’s eating his dinner. My boys dine early. Mott don’t mind, bless you.’

‘Fetch him up.’

An uncertain smile sidled across Mr Rice’s mouth as he
interpreted
Lintott’s tone. The inspector sat there, solid and
expressionless
; his boots planted on Mr Rice’s carpet, hat set squarely on his knees, hands set squarely about the hat. Much had been said, more lay unspoken between them, the greater part was yet to come.

‘Billie, my dear,’ cried his benefactor, as the door opened, ‘this gentleman is an Inspector from Scotland Yard. He wants a private word with you. It’s all right, you know,’ as the lad
hesitated. ‘It’s absolutely confidential, my dear.’ Then he tried to ingratiate himself with Lintott and the boy at once. ‘They ain’t all as handsome as Mott, but they’re every bit as well-fed and well-clothed.
I
bought him that octagon tie – they’re all the rage. Yes, yes, a credit to the establishment. Sit down, Billie my dear, and talk to the Inspector nicely. He wants to know about your late friend Mr Crozier. Oh, Billie was
prostrated
when Mr Crozier died, weren’t you, Billie? Well, it was a friend and patron lost in one go
…’

‘Sit down, lad,’ said Lintott crisply. ‘I don’t know if you’re as good at speechifying as your master here, but I’d rather you wasn’t. I’m more in the direct line myself.’

The boy could have been no more than sixteen, and in the
epicene
stage of young male beauty. For he was beautiful, not merely handsome as Mr Rice had said. Later he would become handsome and thereby lose his present attraction. Now he appeared as vulnerable as a girl, and even his uncertainty was another grace.

‘What sort of a delinquent were
you,
then?’ Lintott asked, surprised by his evident gentility.

Mott looked to his benefactor for instruction.

‘He lost his mother, Inspector. A very sad case. I endeavoured to help her but she was too far gone in …’ he tapped his chest and whispered, ‘Consumption, you know. A widow for many years. Well-born, too, I believe. But married beneath her. She asked me to watch over Billie here. He’s like her, aren’t you, my dear? Show the inspector your mamma’s portrait.’

The lad felt obediently in his elegant breast-pocket and handed over a little gold locket of some value. Imprisoned in paint and time, Mott’s female counterpart smiled at Lintott: silver-gold of head, dark and soft of eyes, with the same air of delicate hope.

‘Who was your father, lad?’ asked Lintott, handing the locket back.

‘Tell the inspector, my dear,’ Rice counselled, receiving another inquiring glance from the boy.

‘He was a music teacher, sir. My mama eloped with him against the wishes of her family. He caught cold and died when I was a small child. My mama had a very little money of her
own, which was set aside for my education. She took in sewing, and painted in water-colours, to keep us.’

‘Weak chests,’ Rice explained, shaking his head in regret. ‘Both parents. Dear, dear!’

Lintott remarked the transparency of the boy’s complexion, and shook his own head.

‘Couldn’t you have helped your mama out a bit?’ he
demanded
, thinking of Bessie in the same situation: beleagured and valiant.

‘She wanted him to be a gentleman,’ Rice broke in. ‘So she insisted on his schooling. The family wanted nothing to do with him after she died, and her little nest egg was spent on her last illness. I was a Friend to them both. I was a Father to this boy. I was a Brother in Christ to that dear dead lady. Wasn’t I, Billie?’

‘You were very good, sir, to us both,’ said Mott frankly.

Rice turned to the inspector and spread out his hands, as if to say, ‘Note this!’

But Lintott replied, ‘You would have done better to set
yourself
to some honest trade, lad. Aye, better to sell that locket – though you do value it – than accept help of this sort. Aye, a thousand times better. Not that it’s my business. How long have you been here?’

‘Nearly twelve months, sir.’

‘You won’t remember your father, I expect? Just kept your mother company, eh? And loved her, of course, and she loved you and lived with the memory of him? Ah well! That’s often the way of it. Mr Crozier must have seemed an impressive sort of man to you, then? Stop looking to Mr Rice for your answers, lad! I’m not concerned with what goes on here, for the moment. When I’m tramping round after one case I don’t trouble to make more work for myself. Though I do remember anything that might come in handy if people don’t tell me the truth. Did you meet Mr Crozier as soon as you got here?’