Newcastle upon Tyne, Friday 23rd August 1929
Clara opened the front door of Uncle Bob’s house and was struck again by the shut-up smell of the place. But at least she could still breathe. She shuddered at the memory of the terrible fire at the Paradise. She had got back to her hotel yesterday evening, frustrated that she had not been able to do anything more to help Alice. She had wanted to examine the picture house for clues to the start of the fire, but the fire brigade wouldn’t let her anywhere near. Then she had wanted to stay with Alice and the usher, Alfie, as the police interviewed them, but she was shooed away as surplus to requirements. She managed to catch a moment with Alice and the two women agreed to meet again the following afternoon. Alice would come through to Newcastle.
Clara had spent last night recovering at the hotel, surprised at how exhausted and shaken she was. She slept in as long as she could, but by mid-morning still had time to kill before the arranged meeting with Alice at Bob’s office at two o’clock. So, she decided to visit the house. Now that she was here, she ought to open some windows to give the place an airing. She picked her way through the front drawing room, noting – once again – that every surface was covered with antiques and ornaments like a cluttered curiosity shop in a London backstreet. How on earth was she going to sort through this lot? What was she going to do with it all? She couldn’t live in a house as overstuffed as this – assuming she chose to do so – but even if she decided to rent it out, it would still need to be cleared.
She managed to squeeze her way past a gramophone, piled high with magazines and record discs, to the sash window, and opened it a couple of inches. On closer inspection, the net curtains were edged with mould.
She then went to the dining room: the mahogany table was covered in stones and bones. A quick inspection revealed them to be fossils and archaeological artefacts. Now that was genuinely interesting, but the sheer volume of them was overwhelming. She wondered whether she might be able to get someone from the local museum – what was it called again, the Hancock? – to give her an assessment of some of the material. Perhaps it was worth exhibiting. And if so, they could help with the sorting and clearing … yes, that was a good idea. Having a plan of some kind always helped her feel better. She opened the dining room window.
Next was the library, and that was a pleasant surprise. Yes, it was crammed with books on every shelf and surface. But it was supposed to be. And there appeared to be some order. A quick perusal ascertained that the fiction was stacked alphabetically, and the non-fiction followed the Dewey classification. The librarian in Clara heartily approved. She skimmed the shelves and found her way to the 500s – the natural sciences – and her heart did a little pirouette when she saw books from Babbage to Darwin and Pasteur to Tesla. There was an entire bookcase of them, floor to ceiling. One of the books wasn’t pushed in properly – she pulled it out to check if it was in the right place and saw that it was a text by Francis Galton called Finger Prints. The name Galton rang a bell. She was sure it had been mentioned in one of the Sherlock Holmes stories, but she couldn’t recall which. A quick flick at the title page and contents revealed that it was not a misfiled fictional work but a scientific treatise by the eminent polymath Sir Francis Galton. Now this would make interesting reading!
She slipped the book into the shopping bag, alongside the Whittaker file – which was now considerably thicker with all the notes she had made yesterday. She opened the window in here too, noting that it overlooked the backyard of the house. It was a dreary yard – a mere expanse of paving with an outhouse and coal bunker – but creeping clematis and jasmine overhanging from the neighbours’ garden walls suggested that it could be made into something far more appealing, if she chose to give it some attention.
She then decided to go upstairs. She had not gone up to the bedrooms when she had first come with Mr Jennings. There were five bedrooms and one bathroom, which had a commode but not a flushing toilet. That would definitely be top of her list of renovations if she were to move in. Three of the bedrooms were used as storage facilities housing more of Uncle Bob’s ephemera from his travels. Clara simply opened then shut the doors. The other two bedrooms, however, were surprisingly tidy. One was clearly a guest bedroom, but the other she assumed to be Bob’s bedroom due to the clothes in the wardrobe and the personal items on the dressing table. She ran her hand through the hanging jackets in the closet, releasing a miasma of mothballs mixed with stale tobacco. These should probably go to the Salvation Army, she thought.
She closed the wardrobe door and sat down on the bed, neatly made up with a clean candlewick bedspread. Was this where he died? Clara had not heard the specifics of how Bob died, other than that he’d died in his sleep, and that it was something to do with his heart. She still had to speak to his doctor. And, she chided herself, she still had to visit his grave. She was ashamed to realise that she had not even asked where her uncle was buried.
To add to her guilt, she suddenly noticed a framed photograph on the bedside table. It was of her and Uncle Bob sitting together having tea on the lawn of the Cornish holiday cottage. It was the summer of 1915, and she was wearing a white, high-collared dress with a sash around her waist. Her dark hair was in youthful ringlets, befitting a fifteen-year-old girl. Uncle Bob was wearing a white suit and a Panama hat, as if he were on the French Riviera. Neither of them was smiling as they looked at the camera, but there was an ease about them. Clara remembered that day. And she remembered the walk along the cliff top afterwards. She touched her finger to Bob’s face and said out loud: ‘I’m sorry, Uncle Bob. I’m sorry we didn’t stay in touch. I’m sorry I stopped writing. And I’m sorry I didn’t come to your funeral. I’m a shoddy niece and I didn’t deserve you as my uncle. And I don’t deserve to inherit all this. But I’ll do my best for you now. I promise I will.’
Clara felt herself well up but bit her lip to stop the tears. She put the photograph in the shopping bag. There were other things to go through – private things – but she didn’t feel ready to do so now. Instead, she decided to go downstairs to the laboratory. That’s what she’d really come for anyway. She knew Bob would approve.
She scuttled down the stairs, through the kitchen and to the laboratory door. She searched for the key on the ring and found it, then pulled the light cord and went down the short flight of stairs. With more time on her hands and without Mr Jennings hovering, she perused the shelves, checking what kinds of chemicals and compounds were available, writing them down in her notebook. Then she did an inventory of the equipment and apparatus. On a desk, in the corner, were a series of notebooks where Uncle Bob had made notes on his experiments and investigations. A quick flick through ascertained what she had already deduced: her uncle had been an enthusiastic amateur. The academic level was not much above that of a clever student who had completed the first year of an undergraduate degree. Still, for a self-taught man it was very impressive.
Rather than what Clara would consider research science, Bob had focused more on criminalistics – or forensics as the Americans called it. Which of course made sense in his line of work. There were notes on the chemical make-up of soil found on the sole of a suspect’s shoe; an unpleasant analysis of some vomit, which Bob had ascertained was seventy per cent alcohol; an intriguing diagram showing the angle of blood spatter across a tablecloth; and the composition of a lipstick smear on a gentleman’s collar. This, Clara expected, had something to do with one of the adultery and divorce cases that Jack Danskin told her made up much of an enquiry agent’s business. Each experiment or analysis was marked with a case name, and Clara wondered if they matched the files in Uncle Bob’s office.
Next to the notebooks was a well-thumbed book called A Practical Handbook for Magistrates, Police Officers and Lawyers by Professor Hans Gross, from the University of Prague. It had originally been written in German but had been translated into English and published in Madras, India. Clara wondered if her uncle had picked it up there on his world travels. The table of contents covered subjects such as ‘identifying criminals’, the ‘language of criminals’ and ‘how to deal with the press’. It explained what to do when an investigator arrived at a crime scene and how to interview the witnesses or accused. The reprint was dated 1906 and Clara expected some of the science in it to be a little out of date; nonetheless, it looked like a very useful introduction to the subject of using scientific techniques in criminal and legal investigations. It explained how to look for traces of blood, excrement; the use of weapons and ballistics; falsification of handwriting; photography and fingerprints; along with chemical analysis of minerals and plants. There was also an intriguing section on poisons and, helpfully for the case at hand, a short section on arson.
She was very tempted to settle down and read it all now, but instead decided to take it back to the hotel. She placed it, along with Bob’s notebooks, into her shopping bag. Then she had a quick search through the desk drawers. On one side was a store of stationery, including some blank notebooks. She helped herself to one of those as well as some pens, pencils, an eraser, rule, compass, protractor and set square. She wasn’t sure yet how she would use them, but she imagined she would want to draw some diagrams when she was finally allowed to get near the Paradise Picture House.
Then she checked the other drawer. Hello, hello? What’s this? There was a leather case, about fourteen by ten inches, and four inches deep, with the initials RWW embossed on the front. RWW? Robert Wendell Wallace? The top of the case was fastened closed with buckles and there was a carry handle on the side. She undid the buckles, intrigued to see what was inside, and was thrilled to discover what she assumed was a fingerprinting kit. There were brushes, a set of callipers, a protractor, rule, tweezers, a magnifying glass and a couple of jars of aluminium powder, an ink pad and some waxed paper cards. There were also a few photographs of fingerprints, held in a pouch, with handwritten notations. Clara had never examined fingerprints before, but from the contents of the box she had an idea of how to go about it. There was also the book she’d found on fingerprinting upstairs, as well as the criminal investigation handbook she’d picked up down here. She buckled closed the case and placed this too in her shopping bag.
She then turned her attention to the central bench in the laboratory where she’d first seen the microscope, the charred wood sample and the note on kerosene. The note was in an open notebook and Clara was pleased to see the case name ‘Whittaker’ written at the top of the page. She flicked back but the file name before that was ‘Armstrong’, and from what she could see, it involved the examination of bullets. Ah yes, she thought, I saw that file in the office. She flicked the page to the Whittaker case and saw that Bob had been making some more notes on the Carousel fire in Tynemouth. Bob had done some calculations about the time it would take for the fire to take hold, considering the known furnishings and available accelerants at the Carousel. She grunted with approval, checking his arithmetic and his methodology. She would use a similar strategy in her approach to investigating the second fire at the Paradise. She noted too a circled note saying: get sample of silver screen. Rate of combustion?
Absolutely, thought Clara, that will be essential to determine.
Then came the note on kerosene, a petroleum distillate, with the formula C12H26−C15H32. Yes, she confirmed, that’s the formula for kerosene. She then turned to the wood sample next to the microscope. It looked like it might have been the seat of a stool. She had a look through the microscope and confirmed that there appeared to be chemical scalding. She looked around the laboratory and was relieved to find what she hoped for: a test tube with a piece of wood sample in it, soaking in a liquid. She took the stopper out of the test tube and sniffed. Yes, it definitely smelt like kerosene. Clara suspected that Bob had used a soap solvent – possibly naphtha – to extract the kerosene from the wood. She took a pipette and extracted a small sample of the liquid and placed it on a microscope slide. She then slipped it under the microscope. A few minutes later she confirmed Bob’s analysis: it was indeed kerosene with traces of naphtha. ‘Well done, Uncle Bob,’ she said out loud. The evidence before her suggested that there had been kerosene splashed on furnishings at the Carousel. She still had to check with Alice whether there was already kerosene on the premises – there or at the Paradise.
Clara’s stomach grumbled. She checked her watch and saw that there was still a while before she was to meet Alice. There was time for a bite to eat. She doubted there was anything in the house, so she decided to go to a bakery to get herself a sandwich. She cleared up the bench and reset the microscope, then rinsed off the pipette and the slide. She placed Bob’s current notebook in the shopping bag with the rest of her haul. Had she just managed to assemble a starter kit for a private investigator? She chuckled; it certainly looked that way!
But there’s one thing missing … She opened the door at the back of the laboratory to reveal a photographic darkroom. She switched on the white light – noted there was a red one too – and glanced around. There was photographic developing equipment, a string with pegs strung across the back wall and … yes, that’s what she was hoping to find … three cameras with a selection of lenses, flash bulbs and film spools. She selected the simplest, most portable device – a Kodak Brownie, a model she had used before to document her own work in the laboratory in Oxford – and some bulbs and spools. The shopping bag was getting quite heavy!
She shut the darkroom door behind her and was preparing to leave the laboratory when she heard the creak of a floorboard upstairs. She froze. Had she just imagined it? No, there it was again. Her mind raced. She’d left the windows open on the ground floor. Had someone sneaked in? She rushed up the stairs and locked the door, her heart racing ten to the dozen. What would she do if whoever it was tried to break in? She looked around for a weapon and found a hacksaw. She stood with it held in both hands, shaking. Then she came to her senses. What do you think you’re doing? Do you really think you’ll be able to defend yourself with this if the assailant is strong enough to kick down the door? Pull yourself together, woman!
Clara backed down the stairs, still holding the hacksaw, but no longer intent on using it. She looked around the laboratory and considered for a moment a bell jar of sulphuric acid. Now that will do some damage … However, before she committed to self-defence with acid, she noticed the window. As this was a basement laboratory it was high up on the wall, above the desk. She climbed up and peeked out. It overlooked the backyard. If she could haul herself up, she could squeeze through.
She listened and could still hear footsteps above. Then, to her horror, the handle of the door rattled. She stood on tiptoe and opened the window – which needed a bit of a push and a heave – then leapt to the floor, picked up a stool and placed it on the desk. She climbed up, precariously, then pushed her handbag and the heavy shopping bag through the window first. Then she clambered through herself, swearing as she felt her stocking tear on the window catch. But she carried on regardless and was soon sprawled in an ungainly pile on the yard flagstones.
She did not tarry. Tempted as she was to peer through the windows and see who it was who might have broken into her uncle’s house, memories of the break-in at the office, and the man in her hotel room on Wednesday night, compelled her instead to run to the back gate of the yard. She yanked it open and ran down the lane and around the corner. She was just about to go into the Corner House pub at the top of St Thomas’ Crescent, and ask them to telephone the police, when she saw someone coming out of the front door of her uncle’s house. And then locking it. It was a woman. A perfectly respectable-looking middle-aged woman.
Suddenly Clara realised who it was. She pulled herself together and walked as calmly as she could towards her uncle’s house.
‘Good afternoon, madam,’ she said. ‘Are you, by chance, Mrs Hobson?’
The woman turned to see who was speaking to her. She gave Clara a curious but polite look. ‘I am,’ she said, with a strong Geordie accent. ‘Can I help you, miss?’
‘I hope so. I’m Miss Vale. Bob Wallace’s niece.’