Walter and Ellen Sickert’s residence was a large, white-fronted Regency house in Clarence Gardens, near to Regent’s Park.
‘They’ve moved up in the world since I last saw them,’ said Daniel as he tugged at the bell pull. ‘When we were doing the Ripper investigation they were in South Hampstead. Walter had his studio on the top floor.’
A young girl of about fourteen, a maid in a striped apron and wearing a small white cap, opened the door to them. They introduced themselves and said they had come to see Mr and Mrs Sickert. Before the girl could head into the house to check, they heard a woman’s voice call: ‘Who is it, Doris?’, and then a stately looking woman in her late forties appeared.
‘Mrs Sickert,’ said Daniel, with a slight bow of his head. ‘I’m Daniel Wilson and this is my partner, Abigail Fenton.’
‘Yes, I remember you. Walter said you might be calling.’
Ellen Sickert was a tall woman, dressed plainly in a long skirt and loose blouse, her dark hair pulled into a bun at the back of her head. She gestured for them to enter, and they followed her to a drawing room. There was a settee in the middle of the room, and Daniel wondered if this was the one on which Sickert claimed to have slept while his companion, the mysterious Edwin O’Tool, slept on the floor. If so, Sickert’s alibi had been blown. The settee was distant enough from the nearest wall for Sickert to have climbed over its back without disturbing anyone sleeping on the floor.
Ellen Sickert motioned for them to sit and she herself took the settee.
‘Walter said he was hoping to hire you to find the killer,’ she told them.
‘Yes. That’s what he’s asked us to do,’ said Daniel.
‘So you’re on the other side of the fence now. I remember last time when you were trying to prove Walter guilty. You and Abberline.’
‘We were just conducting enquiries, Mrs Sickert. As we are now.’
‘You thought he did it. Killed those women.’
‘If we’d believed that he’d have been charged. He wasn’t.’
She scowled, not entirely satisfied. Then she turned to Abigail. ‘And you, Miss Fenton? Do you believe my husband’s innocent of this latest killing?’
‘That’s what he’s asked us to prove by catching the person who committed it.’
‘That’s not an answer.’
Abigail weighed up her response before replying. ‘On any investigation it’s important to keep an open mind, but the evidence so far, particularly the note that was left at Scotland Yard naming him, suggests someone killed Anne-Marie Dresser in order to frame him for the murder.’
‘Yes, that’s what Walter says.’ She looked at them, slightly mollified. ‘Very well, what can I do to help?’
‘We understand that you and your household staff, along with a gentleman called Mr O’Tool, have already given affidavits to Sir Bramley Petton confirming that Mr Sickert was here all night on 14th February, the night she was killed.’
‘That’s right,’ said Ellen.
‘Mr Sickert has told us we can examine them, so we’ll need a letter of authority to Sir Bramley from yourself or Mr Sickert …’
‘I’ll give you one today,’ she said. ‘I’m the one who arranged for Sir Bramley to intercede on Walter’s behalf. Sir Bramley is an old friend of my father’s.’
‘We’d also like to hear from you and your staff about that night.’
‘Why?’ she demanded. ‘You’ll have the affidavits.’
‘Because we might want to ask questions about some of the statements.’
‘You don’t trust us?’
‘I always like to clarify things if I’m unsure of something,’ said Daniel.
‘You want to trick us,’ she said. ‘See if our statements today are the same as the affidavits we gave to Sir Bramley.’
‘I just want to see things for myself,’ said Daniel. ‘For example, we understand that Mr Sickert spent the night sleeping on the settee, while a Mr O’Tool slept on the floor.’
‘That is so,’ said Ellen.
‘Out of curiosity, is this the room where they spent the night?’
‘It is,’ she said.
‘And is this that same settee?’
Ellen Sickert’s lips tightened into a line. ‘You are suggesting that he could have climbed over the back?’
‘It has occurred to me,’ said Daniel. ‘Unless the settee’s been moved since that evening.’
‘Walter was drunk,’ she said curtly. ‘He did not go anywhere that night.’
‘But he could have,’ said Daniel. ‘As you yourself have just said, he could have climbed over the back and got out without treading on Mr O’Tool.’
‘I did not say that,’ she corrected him. ‘I said that you are suggesting he could have done that. He did not.’
‘We’d like to talk to this Mr O’Tool. Do you have an address for him?’
‘No. He was just some casual acquaintance of Walter’s he met in a pub and brought home. He’s always doing that, bringing home lame ducks and misfits. They’re usually material for his work. I believe Sir Bramley may have an address for him.’
Ellen’s head turned towards the door as they heard the sound of the street door opening and closing and footsteps in the hallway.
‘That could be Walter,’ she said.
It was. Walter Sickert appeared in the doorway and beamed at them.
‘Ah, visitors! My private investigators!’
‘Mr Wilson has a question to ask you,’ said Ellen, her voice heavy with disapproval. ‘Is this the settee on which you spent the night when Mr O’Tool was your guest?’
‘The very same,’ said Sickert cheerfully.
‘Mr Wilson has observed that even with Mr O’Tool sleeping next to it, you could have climbed over the back.’
For a moment, Sickert was dumbfounded. Then he said: ‘I must have moved it since that night. I’m sure it was against the wall.’
‘Which wall?’ asked Daniel.
Sickert pointed to the rear wall. Daniel walked over to the wall and paced his way carefully along it, looking at the carpet.
‘That settee has not been against that wall in the last couple of days,’ he said.
‘Well then, it was against one of the other walls,’ said Sickert defensively.
Daniel looked at him inquisitively, then said politely and calmly: ‘Mr Sickert, if we are to represent you, we need you to be truthful with us.’
‘Yes, all right, dammit,’ blustered Sickert. ‘The settee was where it is now. But I did sleep on it, and Mr O’Tool was beside it, and I assure you I did not clamber over the back. I never got up from it until the maid came to bring me and Mr O’Tool a cup of tea each in the morning.’
‘Thank you,’ said Daniel. ‘With your permission, we’d like to talk to your servants.’
‘Can’t it wait until tomorrow?’ asked Sickert, pained. ‘As I told you, I’m off to Venice tomorrow and I need the servants to help me pack.’
Daniel and Abigail exchanged questioning looks, then Daniel nodded. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Do you have an address for Mr O’Tool?’
Sickert shook his head. ‘I met him at the Mother Redcap pub. I have no idea where he lives. Sir Bramley might have it.’
Daniel turned to Ellen. ‘In that case, if you’ll give me that letter of authority to Sir Bramley Petton, Mrs Sickert, we’ll call on him to look at the affidavits, and we’ll return tomorrow to talk to you and the servants. Will that be acceptable?’
She nodded, then rose. ‘I’ll go and write that letter of authority.’
As Daniel and Abigail made their way to Sir Bramley Petton’s chambers in High Holborn, Abigail commented: ‘So it seems it was Ellen Sickert who arranged for Sir Bramley Petton.’
‘And paid for it, I expect,’ said Daniel. ‘That was one of the things we turned up before, Sickert isn’t that well off. It’s Ellen who’s got the money.’
‘Where from?’
‘A trust fund set up in her father’s memory. He was Richard Cobden.’
‘The radical politician? The repeal of the Corn Laws and free trade?’
‘The same. But he was also a businessman and that’s where he made his money. She’s supported Sickert financially ever since they were married so he could paint.’
‘Despite the fact he seems to be serially unfaithful to her?’
‘Plenty of marriages seem to work on different rules,’ observed Daniel.
Sir Bramley Petton’s chambers were on the first floor of the tall redbrick building, and when his clerk told them he had visitors, and who they were, Petton invited them into his office, which was an untidy sprawl of papers tied with red tape and books piled on every surface. Petton read the letter of introduction that Ellen Sickert had given them, then nodded as he handed it back. He gestured towards the two chairs opposite his, and they sat.
‘I know of you by reputation, of course,’ he said. ‘Ellen says you wish to look at the affidavits.’
‘We do,’ confirmed Daniel.
Petton took a thick brown envelope from a nearby pile and pushed it across the desk to them. Daniel undid the string that secured the envelope and took out the bundle of papers. Only six sheets of paper at the top of the sheaf were written affidavits, the rest were sheets of paper, some handwritten, some printed, which seemed to have no relation to the Sickerts or the case. Daniel and Abigail looked inquisitively at Petton, who shrugged.
‘Subsidiary documentation,’ he said airily.
‘Or bulk to intimidate a chief superintendent?’ asked Daniel.
‘We all play games,’ shrugged Petton.
Daniel and Abigail read through the six affidavits, one each by Walter and Ellen Sickert, one by the mysterious Edwin O’Tool, one each from the housekeeper, Mrs Stanton, and Johnson, Sickert’s manservant, and finally one from the maid, Doris. All had been written by the same hand, presumably Petton’s. The statements from Walter and Ellen Sickert and the housekeeper and Johnson had been signed by them, and those from Mr O’Tool and the maid were marked with a cross.
‘Thank you,’ said Daniel, replacing the sheets of paper in the envelope and passing it back to Petton. ‘However, that business with the settee doesn’t hold up under examination. It’s in the middle of the drawing room. Walter Sickert could have climbed over the back and got out without disturbing Mr O’Tool.’
‘I thought you were on our side,’ said Petton, annoyed.
‘We are,’ said Daniel. ‘But the first move of any detective worth their salt is to examine the evidence, both from the prosecution and the defence. We’d like to talk to Mr O’Tool. Do you have an address for him?’
‘No. He appeared at my office and said he needed to make a statement. I asked him for his address, but he said he was currently without a permanent address.’
‘Who brought him to your office?’ asked Abigail.
‘It was Johnson, the Sickerts’ manservant,’ replied Sir Bramley.
‘Did he say where he’d found him?’
‘No. I assume he’d found him in a pub somewhere.’ He leant forward, his piercing eyes fixed on Daniel. ‘You were involved in investigating the Ripper murders, Mr Wilson. Do you believe that Walter Sickert could have carried them out?’
‘I have no opinion on that,’ said Daniel. ‘Not one I’m prepared to share.’
‘But you have accepted the engagement to clear his name.’
‘Everyone is entitled to justice,’ said Daniel blandly. He stood up. ‘Thank you, Sir Bramley.’
‘What do you think?’ asked Abigail as they made their way out to the pavement.
‘About Sickert, or about Sir Bramley Petton?’
‘All of it.’
‘The affidavits are worthless, and Petton knows that. The whole thing was a charade played out by a bombastic would-be actor.’
‘Which was successful,’ added Abigail.
‘Yes, that’s what he does,’ said Daniel.
‘But we’re no nearer to knowing if Sickert is guilty.’
‘No, although my own assessment of him is that he’s a watcher rather than a doer.’
‘So we look elsewhere for our killer?’
‘We do.’
‘And Mr O’Tool?’
‘We’ll talk to Johnson and ask him where he found Mr O’Tool, and how he knew where to find him. But I think that whole settee business is a red herring. I think our next move is to look into Anne-Marie Dresser’s life.’
‘You think she was killed by someone she was involved with?’
‘It’s possible, but I believe we need to find out where Sickert’s and Anne-Marie’s lives intersect. The note naming Sickert is the crux of it. Either it was written because someone knew that Sickert had killed her; or it was written to frame him. In which case, it’s likely that the killer wrote that note. The obvious deduction, if that’s the case, is that the killer is someone who knows Sickert and hates him enough to kill someone.’
‘Why doesn’t he just kill Sickert?’
‘Because he wants to discredit him publicly, and for him to hang as a murderer. If that’s the case, then it’s someone who knew Anne-Marie was a part of Sickert’s life.’