The Lost Empress (27 page)

‘That’s an interesting theory, too,’ Tayte said. ‘And one which might certainly have dashed Alice’s hopes if she believed her husband would corroborate her story.’ Tayte finished his drink. ‘But it is just a theory. Right now I don’t see how we can know for sure.’

A slow smile spread across Davina’s face. ‘I think once you’ve heard what I turned up today, you’ll agree that it’s more than just a theory.’

Tayte was more intrigued than ever now to find out what she had discovered, but he thought they would need another drink to go with the explanation, and both their glasses were empty.

‘Hold that thought,’ he said. ‘Let me get us another drink first.’

When Tayte came back from the bar, Davina’s handbag was open, and there were two folded pieces of A4 paper on the table, which Tayte supposed were the results of Davina’s research.

‘Phoebe Dodson,’ Davina said. She sat up and eyed Tayte seriously. ‘I’ve been looking into her most of the day, and I strongly believe she was murdered for the notebook mentioned in that telegram.’

‘Murdered?’ The word struck a familiar chord in Tayte’s ear.

‘Yes, and it also seems clear to me now that my husband was killed for the same reason. Because someone wants this notebook—now as then.’

‘Two murders motivated by the same object a hundred years apart?’ Tayte said, as much to himself as to Davina. He thought back over some of his more adventurous assignments and knew it wouldn’t be the first time. ‘What did you find out?’

‘I began in the usual way, looking for Phoebe’s details in the birth, marriage and death indexes. From the International Genealogical Index I found that she was born in England, right here in Kent, which piqued my interest. I could find no record of marriage, so I moved on. Then I saw when she died.’ Davina paused to sip her drink. ‘It was in 1914.’

Tayte’s interest had more than piqued. He sat forward. ‘When in 1914?’

Davina looked at him assuredly, as if to suggest that what she was about to tell him would knock him for six. ‘Phoebe died on the 2nd of June 1914.’

The information certainly knocked Tayte back into his seat. He scrunched his brow, scarcely able to believe what Davina had just told him. ‘That’s just four days after the telegram was sent.’

‘I know, and I couldn’t believe it was simply a coincidence, so I kept digging.’

‘Do you know how she died?’

Davina nodded. ‘There wasn’t time to wait for a copy of her full death certificate from the relevant authorities in Quebec.’

‘The Directeur de l’état civil,’ Tayte said. ‘I’ll put a request in anyway, for my records.’

‘Yes, good idea. It should also confirm who Phoebe’s father was. Unless Lord Thomas Ashcroft was shrewd enough to keep his name off it.’

‘Thomas Ashcroft? Archibald’s father?’

‘The very same. At least, I believe he must have been Phoebe’s father. I turned to the newspaper archives once I felt I’d gone as far as I could with the various genealogical indexes. I thought that if the timing of Phoebe’s death was connected to the telegram, her death would likely be unnatural and thus newsworthy. At least if not, then I thought I might find an obituary in the newspaper archives—which I did.’ Davina reached forward and picked up one of the pieces of paper she’d previously set out. ‘Here it is,’ she added, handing it to Tayte.

Tayte unfolded the sheet of paper and saw a printed screenshot of the original copy from the obituaries section of North America’s oldest newspaper, the
Quebec Chronicle
, which Tayte now knew of as the
Chronicle Telegraph
, following a merger between the two newspapers in 1925. It was dated 15 June 1914. He read it and quickly discovered that the obituary was not for one person, but two: Phoebe Dodson and her mother Irene, both having died on the same day.

‘See who was in attendance,’ Davina said.

Tayte scanned ahead and saw the connection. ‘Thomas Ashcroft,’ he said. ‘So it’s possible, even likely, that Phoebe Dodson was Archibald’s half sister.’

‘Which explains why Alice went to Quebec when she went on the run.’

Tayte gave a thoughtful nod as he lingered over the obituary. ‘Two deaths on the same day,’ he mused. ‘The plot thickens, doesn’t it?’

‘Perhaps not too much,’ Davina said. ‘I kept digging in the newspaper archives, and it didn’t take long to discover the cause of death.’ She handed Tayte the other piece of paper. ‘It’s a bit of a shocker.’

Tayte unfolded it and studied it in silence for several seconds. This copy was from a newspaper Tayte was less familiar with: The
Quebec Daily Mercury
. It was dated 3 June 1914—the day after Phoebe’s death. He read the headline aloud. ‘BLAZE AT CHARLESBOURG HOME KILLS TWO.’ He read on and his face had drained of expression by the time he’d finished. The report was a detailed and harrowing account of the events that had led to the discovery of the charred remains of two women found huddled together in an upstairs closet while their house burned around them.

Tayte heaved a thoughtful sigh. ‘Did you find anything else—anything to suggest it was arson? There’s a gap of almost two weeks between the fire and the funeral. I’m sure there must have been an inquest.’

Davina shook her head. ‘No, that’s all I could find. When you put it all together, though, it looks pretty conclusive, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes, I’d say it does,’ Tayte said, making a mental note to have a look for an inquest report himself before he turned in for the night.

He thought about Frank Saxby then. ‘As well as looking into Henry Stilwell, I also looked into Frank Saxby some more before I came down from my room. It’s why I was late.’

‘What did you find?’

‘Not much beyond what little we already know, but what else I did find is interesting. According to the indexes, Francis Edwin Saxby, as he was christened, died August 5th 1914—the day after Britain declared war on Germany.’

‘That is interesting,’ Davina said. ‘Do you know how he died?’

‘Not yet, but I’ve requested a copy of his death certificate. Maybe it will tell us something, although it’s going to take time to come through.’

Tayte reached into his briefcase and took out the Metcalfe family-and-friends photograph. Studying it again, he was reminded of Oscar Scanlon and the failing business partnership Davina had told him about, and of the shoe factory fire that had taken several lives. He thought that if Saxby was behind the death of Phoebe and her mother, then such a modus operandi was perhaps not unfamiliar to him—not if the accusations of causing the factory blaze for the insurance money were true.

‘You see now why I think Phoebe was murdered for the notebook mentioned in the telegram,’ Davina said. ‘And why my earlier theory that Alice was betrayed by her husband might hold some truth.’

Tayte didn’t need Davina to spell it out for him. ‘Given the gravity of her situation,’ he said. ‘Alice wouldn’t have given Phoebe’s details to anyone other than Henry, and certainly not to Albrecht. But it was Albrecht who sent the telegram to Saxby. Ergo, Henry must have told him after getting the information from Alice.’ He slapped his palms on his armrests. ‘And that’s what changed after the
Empress
left Quebec. Alice was betrayed by the one person who could have saved her—her own husband, whose allegiance clearly rested in his deep rooted love for Germany over the love he felt for his family.’

It upset Tayte to think that a man could put anything before his family like that. It made him think about his birth mother again, and the reason she had abandoned him. ‘For the child’s own protection,’ was all she had said. Clearly she thought him to be in some kind of danger all the while he was with her, and he now began to see Alice’s situation in a similar light.

But why had Alice never gone back for her children?

Tayte figured there must have been plenty of good, if painful, reasons to Alice’s mind, and he supposed now that that was probably also true of his own mother, unless of course his own mother, for reasons he didn’t like to think about, had been unable to return for him.

‘What about the timing?’ Davina said, cutting into Tayte’s thoughts. ‘How do you suppose Saxby could have reached Quebec so quickly? The fire only happened a few days after the telegram was sent. He can’t have taken a ship in time, and transatlantic flight wasn’t an option then, was it?’

‘No, but I don’t believe Saxby would have tried to go himself,’ Tayte said. ‘And neither did he have to. If my thinking around Saxby and his notebook is on the right track, I’d say he already had a network of people to call upon from all over the world, ready and willing to do whatever it took to get that notebook back to him.’

‘Spies?’ Davina said.

‘It all fits, doesn’t it? It’s clear that Alice got hold of a notebook that belonged to Frank Saxby, which he desperately wanted back. She was being forced to spy on her country, and there’s Saxby in the middle of it all. I can only believe from all this that Alice came to learn more than she should have about the people who were pulling her strings. The only questions in my mind now are what was written in that notebook, and why would anyone kill your husband for it today?’

‘Whoever did kill Lionel must have thought he had it with him that night.’

‘That telegram certainly could have led someone to believe he did. Perhaps Lionel had shown it to someone.’

‘I suppose it’s possible, but I can’t think who would be interested in seeing it, or why.’

‘Any of the Metcalfe family?’

Davina smiled. ‘You’re clutching at straws again, JT. If you’re suggesting Raife Metcalfe, I should remind you that he and my husband didn’t really get on with one another, and Raife was with his wife and me at dinner the night Lionel was murdered.’

Tayte gave a thoughtful nod, wondering perhaps whether the telegram and the notebook were somehow behind the reason why Lionel and Raife fell out. But as Davina had just reminded him, Raife had a solid alibi that night. He wondered then who else had both the motive and opportunity, and he figured it had to be someone Lionel knew. He thought about Dean Saxby. There was no question that he and Lionel Scanlon were acquainted. His story about the cigar case had checked out, and he’d even provided Bishop with information he hoped would prove useful to the case, if only for the reward money. But had he told them everything about what happened the day he went to see Lionel Scanlon?

Tayte couldn’t dismiss the fact that Dean Saxby was Frank Saxby’s great-great-grandson, either. Items that appeared to be connected with Lionel Scanlon’s murder had been handed down through the Scanlon family, so why not the Saxby family, too? Was there something else from the past that Dean had neglected to tell them about? His and Lionel’s ancestors had been business partners, and their partnership had literally gone up in flames, claiming the lives of several factory workers. Did a motive for murder exist somewhere in the ashes? Tayte heaved a sigh and concluded that the only way he had any chance of working out who had killed Lionel Scanlon was to first understand why, and to do that he needed the notebook, to understand what it contained.

‘If the notebook still exists today,’ Tayte said, ‘and someone clearly seems to believe it does, where could it be?’ He was thinking aloud, but he thought that if Davina had any ideas he’d be glad to hear them. ‘How could a notebook survive for a hundred years? What kind of environment is conducive to protecting something like that in the longer term?’

The most likely answer came to both of them at the same time, perhaps because such things were always on Tayte’s mind on account of his profession, and because of the research he and Davina were currently embroiled in.

‘An archive,’ they said, turning to one another as they spoke, wearing similar expressions that were as much to suggest it was obvious.

‘Or it could just as well be tucked away in a box in someone’s attic,’ Tayte added.

‘Yes, it could,’ Davina agreed. A moment later she laughed to herself. ‘Actually, my husband would have favoured that answer. “It’s amazing what you can find in the forgotten spaces of the world” he’d say.’ She laughed again. ‘Plenty of which has ended up in his workshop over the years, I can tell you.’

That notion set Tayte wondering. ‘Do you think the notebook could be tucked away somewhere at your husband’s workshop?’

Davina shook her head. ‘It’s possible, but I shouldn’t think so. It’s the only place associated with Lionel and me that hasn’t been broken into since Lionel’s murder.’

‘Perhaps by the time the killer left your husband’s workshop, he already believed it wasn’t there, but I don’t see how he could be certain.’

‘No, and nothing much was disturbed that night, although I’m sure the police searched the place quite thoroughly. They can’t have known what my husband’s killer was looking for, though.’

‘Do you want to go and take a look?’

‘Why not?’ Davina said. ‘We’ve a few hours of daylight left, and it’s too early to eat. You don’t mind if we have dinner again this evening, do you?’

‘Not in the least.’

Tayte picked up his drink and finished what little was left. He hadn’t imagined he’d be going anywhere else that night, other than to his bed, or he’d have had a cola. ‘I’ll get reception to call us a taxi.’