Devoured (3 page)

‘A regular magpie, wasn’t she? No husband any more to rein her in, but plenty of money and time on her hands, I dare say, to indulge in all flights of fancy. Perhaps a flight of fancy is what got her killed, Professor?’ Adams showed less deference than Hatton, picking up the shell and holding it to his ear. For a moment he seemed lost in thought. ‘Marvellous things. Now then, let’s see what we can tell you. No sign of a struggle. No forced entry. Just the hall window slightly open to tell us someone was here that oughtn’t to be. We haven’t done a thorough search yet, but on the face of it and according to the servants’ – he looked at his notes – ‘everything, more or less, as before. Apart from one thing. A missing maid. Name of Flora James, who’s been in service here for three years and by all accounts was the mistress’s favourite. Pretty thing, I’m told. Fair-haired. Quite ladylike in her manners, of medium height, well turned out, nineteen or thereabouts. The description is a rough one but we’re putting a likeness together based on what we can gather. We’ll track her down, but it’s odd because there’s nothing of value missing, and if the little madam was a thief, well, the jewellery would be gone. Apparently, she had been sent ahead of the other staff, the day before Lady Bessingham’s murder. The rest were at the country residence, at a place called Ashbourne. Flora was on an urgent errand it seems. Are you listening to me, Professor?’

But Hatton was distracted by a tiny bird, which was scratching forlornly in the bottom of its cage. How he loathed the practice of keeping birds imprisoned like this. He had a mind to let the poor thing go, but thought better than displaying such unmanly sensibility in front of Inspector Adams. The detective might misjudge him.

He looked around the room again to find something – anything – which could illuminate this crime, but there was nothing unusual. And then as his eye fell on the surface of the higly polished writing desk, it came to him, the tiniest thing, but significant.

‘Are there any academic papers anywhere, Inspector? Any correspondence in the study, perhaps? Parcels waiting for despatch or post not opened?’ Hatton paused waiting for a response.

‘And your point, Professor? We’ve seen all her main correspondence, but they’re innocent affairs. Mainly orders for books, bills from dressmakers, and other such daily dealings with domestic matters. There are several bundles of letters to museums and other scientific institutions, as it appears Lady Bessingham was rather doting on crusty academics. She provided some money, I understand, to several beneficiaries. I shall be investigating this further to establish any links to her death, but in my experience, Professor, the crime is often an obvious one. I suspect a lover or a thief.’

There was something in his approach, so defiantly de facto, that jarred Hatton, but nevertheless, he said again, ‘Yes, but has anyone checked to see if there were other, perhaps unfinished letters?’ His eyes travelled, scrutinising this romantic testament to art and nature. A cacophony of silks, exotica, exuberant pictures of dark bodies jostling and dancing in the clearings of far-flung places captured in oil, and iridescent beetles in graded succession imprisoned in glass. Books deftly creased, to mark a point or a query.

‘Look about the room, Inspector. What do you see?’

‘I see a mess, Professor.’

‘Well, I see something else. Something I have seen before but not in a house, rather in a University. This woman was at work in her boudoir, Inspector. At work on some intellectual pursuit, and if that’s the case, then why is her desk entirely clear of papers? Where are the thoughts, the observations?’ Hatton paused to make sure the Inspector was following. ‘There’s no trace of her thinking here, at all, and you say she was a benefactor to the arts and sciences? Well, there would have been some sign of this, surely? Some scribbled notes, perhaps? Or letters pertaining to this work? So where are the letters? Her room is a jumble but it’s also like a ghost. She was no recluse, surely?’

Adams flicked a little tobacco to the floor. ‘Do you know, I think you’re right. I’m glad to have you on board, Professor. Lady Bessingham’s soirees had become a regular fixture in the Society pages. Sir William told me that the great and the good dined here at least once a month. Mainly Men of Science or Philosophy. I think it’s fair to suggest she courted conjecture, which in my view is but a stone’s throw from controversy. Perhaps she also courted trouble.’

Hatton excused himself, and as he stepped out of the boudoir, he caught a glimpse of another room at the end of the hallway, where a low lamp was throwing off a shadow. He heard childish sobbing and a voice, an old clucky one, saying, ‘There now, Violet, my luvvie. There now my lamb.’ A servant? A maid, perhaps?

TWO

 

 

 

The bells of Westminster rang out nine times, a sonorous chime across London, as a cold beam of light fell on the Duke of Monreith. He cleared his throat, glared at the opposition, and, addressing The House, said, ‘Yet again, dissenters lay down their doctrine of universal suffrage, but I deny that every man has the right to vote. What every man has the right to is to be governed by those who will ensure the status quo. They who propose change will lead us into barbarism, Frenchyism, anarchy. My Lord Speaker, we, its leaders, have been ordained the responsibility to ensure everything must remain true to God, Church, and Monarchy and that England remains, forever, immutable.’

Men jumped to their feet, waving their papers in thunderous approval as the Duke looked around triumphant. But others, towards the back, were slipping out, their words drowned out. Their ‘Shame, shame on you’ a dull echo but, yet unknown to them, a shadow of the future.

The Duke, however, was nowhere near finished on matters of parliament. There was a long day ahead with a night sitting in The Lords, and so he swept up the central stairs, past a labyrinth of corridors, then through an arched door to where an old man was sitting hunched over a pile of papers.

‘Good God, a little speed if you will. Haven’t you finished the speech yet for tonight, Ashby? Another hour at the most or I’ll set the dogs on you.’

The Duke settled his rump on a leather chair by the fire, a glass of malt in his hand, whilst the recipient of this usual abuse let the wave of animosity wash over him. Because thirty years of scratching, scribbling, hurrying, and carrying had taught Arnold Ashby that duty was an onerous thing, but that order must prevail. The clerk finished scribing the last of his master’s words, then pushed his glasses back onto the bridge of a bony nose; forever sliding down again, these accursed glasses, but without them, where would he be? His eyesight, he’d noticed, as did Mrs Ashby, had started to fail him, even with the help of spectacles. Lord knows, there was no money left to buy a new pair, so he must make do.

Thinking on money, Arnold Ashby sighed. He had so little left to pawn these days, or offer those greasy fingers, the latest in a long line of lenders who had counted out the money, muttering barely above a whisper, ‘You still owes me for the last lot I gives you. Interest is mounting, but it’s a pretty ring. A little thing, but little things are often precious. Shame, ain’t it? But a man must eat.’

‘Just the money, sir.’ Though it bothered Ashby to call the lender that, for he wasn’t worth the title of a gentleman. But there was no choice because Madame Martineau had whispered that everything was at stake. The Duke’s reputation and with it all that Ashby was, all that he believed in, the very air around him, the roof over his head. Madame Martineau had been very clear about the latter. ‘Do as I say and bring me the money, or it will be more than just his head that’ll roll. It’ll be the workhouse for you, old man.’ So, Ashby had no choice. He had to protect his master as well as himself, so the money was needed and the ring had to go.

Rising up from his workbench, Ashby enquired about the diagrams which should accompany tonight’s speech. ‘Lord knows but I need maps, you cloth head, clearly depicting the various trade routes.’

Ashby bowed dutifully to the Duke, his bows shallower with each passing year, arthritis interfering with deference. Somewhere in the vast rooms a clock ticked. The crackling timber in the hearth burned.

The Duke of Monreith put his whisky down and stretched out a liver-spotted hand for his coat, and as he did so said, ‘I’ll be back from my club after lunch, and then we’ll head to the docks. I have business matters to attend to which are in need of a clerk.’ He continued talking, as if to an infant.

‘The East is troublesome. A whole consignment of spice has failed to reach us, again. And the reasons given? Trouble with the natives, of course. Well, my speech tonight will make reference to this, and all that’s required for the sound running of the Empire, because, mark me, Ashby, this is no time for treachery, for uprisings, for even a sniff of sedition.’

Ashby bowed this time lower than before, to signify his absolute understanding. He had, only a few hours earlier, sat with his quill, scratching out the words which appeared in all of the Duke’s parliamentary work. Delivered in bombastic tones, as the Duke stood, pipe lit, smoking jacket on, spouting his usual, ‘Country, nation, class. Church, party, monarchy … are you listening, Ashby? Are you getting all of this down?’

Yes, of course he had. His vowels, spider’s legs; his consonants worse, and the black ink a permanent stain on his fingertips, as Ashby drafted, corrected, copied, but rarely embellished, taking some comfort in the endless repetition, with the promise that everything that was would always be, now and forever, the same.

‘And Ashby,’ the Duke barked at his obedient dog. ‘Don’t forget that Joseph Hooker has another paper out, circulating amongst those sacrilegious Athenaeum members. He talks about flowers and the distribution of seeds, but I know where it’s leading. He’s an atheist. All those botanicals are. Secure a copy, Ashby.’

The old man scratched his head. ‘Secure a copy, Ashby.’ A command which meant having to trudge along icy streets, his head down, the wind up, to be met by the porter of the Linnean Society with a glare and, ‘Your master ain’t a member, is he? What’s he want with it, anyway? Ah, well, since you’ve come all this way. “The Distribution of Arctic Flowers” by J. Hooker. Is that the one?’

Ashby looked out of the mullion window across the frozen river, where the late morning light was half drawn – an angel breath of citrus, a rush of lilac. A thick fog was rising and out across the city, an eagle’s view warranted him a vista of winter-clad people, horses and carriages. He shuddered as he watched skeletal elms bend and twist against the ferocious weather. The snow couldn’t lie and cover it up, he thought, as Ashby watched a mud lark, a mere child, chipping the icy Thames for bones, pennies, fish heads, bits of this and that.

Ashby crossed the floor to an oversized drawer and stopping at ‘B’ he took out, then unrolled, a map. Smoothing it, he ran his finger across a coast rendered gold, a mighty river, ultramarine, wide at first, then breaking out into a cobweb of azure tributaries. And as he did, revelled in the faraway lines imagining the waves, the sand, and the busting fecundity. There was a time once when he would have fancied himself as a mapmaker who travelled on a brig, the captain’s personal cartographer, charting the lines and dips of South America. An artist of form and definition, of exact measurements and tidy summations.

But he’d better get on with the work, he supposed, and so rolled up the map and, picking up the papers, scurried along till he found himself in The House, where Ashby looked up at a sky-high monster of panelled wood and iridescent glass.

The sweet, pungent scent of beeswax and linseed oil filled the old man’s nostrils, because even in the depths of winter, the workings of government ground on. The great heart of politics kept pulsating by a thousand clerks like Ashby. The lucky ones pouring in from the suburbs, and like many men, Ashby dreamt of a time when he, too, might get away from the city before it consumed him. More fantasy again, which this time had a garden, a privet hedge, and an abundance of sweet-smelling flowers. He put his hand to the place where he kept a cameo hidden from view, on a cheap silver chain, because his mother had loved flowers, too. And told himself, that a clerk on fifty pounds a year was not nothing. That it was something to relish, and tell his children and grandchildren one day.

Ashby did what he had to do in The House, then made his way back again along the winding corridors to the Duke’s vast rooms, which were lined with generations of oils. Their eyes seemed to follow him, but he shrugged the feeling off, ignoring the portraits, and got back to shuffling this pile here and that pile there. To his right were logbooks pertaining to trade. To his left, hidden under a pile of papers, was Madame Martineau’s money.