Abberline had decided to catch a train to Clapham. ‘I don’t usually, but at this time of day the buses take for ever,’ he told them. They walked with him to Victoria Station to talk about their next course of action on the way.
‘I think tomorrow we should call on Edmund Heppenstall and very subtly put the cat among the pigeons,’ proposed Daniel. ‘See how he reacts.’
‘You don’t think warning him might be counter-productive?’ asked Abberline thoughtfully. ‘He might not do or say anything, but start covering his tracks.’
‘And we can watch him do it,’ said Daniel.
‘Difficult because we don’t know where those tracks are,’ continued Abberline. ‘And the only way to do that would be to mount a 24-hour watch on him, which means we’re not looking into any other possibilities.’
‘What other possibilities?’ asked Abigail.
‘Well, for one thing, I agree that this Heppenstall character seems a strong candidate, but have you checked on his movements for the nights when the two murders were committed? Does he have alibis that can be checked?’
Abigail and Daniel stared at one another, stunned.
‘My God!’ said Daniel. ‘That’s one thing we never checked. I was so sure that Heppenstall was the toff that Kate Branson talked about.’
‘He may still be,’ said Abberline. ‘But let’s check first if he’s got an alibi for the two nights.’
‘The hospitals,’ said Daniel. ‘Helena Swanwick told Abigail that he’s highly thought of as a surgeon. She might know which particular hospitals he works at.’
‘I’ll ask her,’ said Abigail.
‘Do that,’ said Abberline. By now they’d arrived at Victoria. ‘This is where I leave you. Shall we say ten o’clock tomorrow at the National Gallery? It’ll give me a chance to meet this Stanford Beckett, now we’re back on the case.’
After Abberline had left them to catch his train, Abigail could see that Daniel was in a very grim mood.
‘I’m starting to wonder if I’m in the right job,’ he said sourly.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Twice now I’ve messed up, and both times in front of my old boss. First, I missed the idea of checking on the families of women who might have been victim of the original Ripper, you thought of that.’
‘Oh, come on, Daniel. You’d have thought of it once we started going through Abberline’s notebooks.’
‘Not necessarily. And my biggest blunder was not checking if Heppenstall might have had an alibi for the nights of the murders. I was so convinced he was involved, working with Joe Wallace, that I didn’t do a very basic piece of police work. And both times I messed up in front of Abberline. What must he think of me?’
Abigail put her arms around him and hugged him close.
‘He’s not your boss any more,’ she said. ‘You don’t need to impress him.’
‘Yes, but I don’t want to show him I’m a failure.’
Abigail stepped back from him and looked at him, and he saw real anger in her face.
‘How dare you!’ she snapped. ‘You are not a failure. You never were. For God’s sake, you came out of the workhouse, completely alone in the world at twelve years old, and battled your way up to be a distinguished officer in Scotland Yard’s elite detective division, and now you’re applauded by all and sundry and in demand as a private detective by all the great museums.’
‘But—’ he began.
‘There are no buts about this,’ she told him firmly. ‘Yes, you overlooked a couple of things, and one of them – the business of Heppenstall’s alibi for when the murders took place – could be important. We’ll soon find out. It could be we discover that Heppenstall wasn’t working at any hospital on the night the two women were killed and has no alibi for when the murders were committed.’
‘But he might!’
‘And if so, yes, you made a mistake. We made a mistake. Who doesn’t make mistakes? When I was studying at Cambridge, one of our lecturers said to us: the person who never made a mistake never made anything. No one gets everything right. If I listed the mistakes I made when I was at archaeological digs in Egypt and Rome, wrongly classifying some objects, I might think I’d never work again. But we all make errors. The major thing is to learn from them, put them right, and not make the same mistake again.’
‘But the business of checking Heppenstall’s alibi was so elementary!’
‘You think you’re the only one who’s made a basic mistake? I bet you Abberline made a few during his career.’
‘Yes, he did,’ admitted Daniel.
‘And did you think any less of him because of it?’
‘No. Because the ones he made were few and far between, and he always owned up to them and didn’t try to pretend they were someone else’s fault.’
‘And the same could be said of you. And me. And everyone else who’s ever achieved anything.’
Daniel fell silent, then gave a sigh and nodded. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I deserved that.’
‘I’m also not going to let this business of whether Heppenstall has an alibi wait till tomorrow,’ added Abigail. ‘We need to find out. You need to find out. So we’ll go to see Helena now and ask her which hospitals he works at.’
‘Mr Heppenstall is in private practice, but he also works as a consultant for University College Hospital and the Middlesex,’ Helena told them when they called on her. ‘They call him in if there’s a patient with a condition that’s too much for them to deal with. And also, I believe, he goes in when there’s an emergency. Usually those seem to happen at night. I remember someone telling me that the human body is at its lowest ebb during the night.’ She looked at them inquisitively. ‘Do you suspect him of being involved in the killings? Only, as I said, I can’t believe that, not from what I’ve heard about him.’
‘No, no,’ Abigail assured her. ‘It’s about another aspect.’ Then, as an apparent afterthought, she said: ‘But coming back to the killings, as you know, we’re considering the idea that the person behind them may be someone Walter hurt by his actions.’
‘Like the business with Catherine Heppenstall?’
‘Yes. We were wondering if there were any other rumours and gossip about people who’d suffered because of … Walter’s indiscretions.’
‘That’s a very tactful way to put it,’ sighed Helena. ‘Yes, I do know of another case. But Walter was completely innocent, despite the fact that the affair had a tragic outcome. Although there wasn’t actually an affair,’ she added hastily.
‘What happened?’ asked Daniel.
‘I don’t know if you recall the newspapers reporting on the death of Lady Powbry about a year ago?’
Daniel looked at Abigail, who shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘How did she die?’
‘She killed herself.’
Abigail looked puzzled. ‘But how did that involve Walter? You said there was no affair between them.’
‘That’s what’s so ridiculous. She became absolutely enamoured of him, but he didn’t respond. At least, not in the way she wanted.’
‘Why ever not? Didn’t he find her attractive enough?’
‘Oh, she was attractive. Very much so. But Walter told her no.’
‘Why? With no disrespect to your brother, Helena, but I can’t imagine him saying no to any woman.’
‘I agree, but from what I can gather at that time he had such a tangled love life it was causing him all sorts of distress, and he was sure Nellie was on the point of finding out just what was going on with him and other women, so he backed off.’
‘And she killed herself?’
‘Yes. She took poison. It was terrible. Awful. But Walter was not responsible.’
‘In a way he was, because he rejected her.’
‘He would have had to reject her anyway, he couldn’t bear Nellie finding out. And Dorothea Powbry made no secret about her love and desire for Walter.’
‘How did her husband react? Lord Powbry?’
‘To be honest, I don’t know, I only heard about the situation second-hand. I never actually spoke to him after the event.’ She looked at Abigail. ‘Actually, you know him. Or, rather, you did. He was at Cambridge at the same time we were. He was at Trinity.’
Abigail frowned. ‘I don’t remember any Lord Powbry.’
‘Oh, he wasn’t Lord Powbry then. He was James Dowsett. He only became Lord Powbry when his father died and he inherited the title, and also his mansion in Oxfordshire and his rather grand town house in Knightsbridge.’
‘James Dowsett!’ exclaimed Abigail. ‘My heavens, I recall him as a rather weedy little chap. Secretary of the Egypt Society, which is why I remember him. They put on a few events, which we classical students attended.’ She smiled. ‘Although there were always mutterings of protest from some of the more conservative-minded members of the Egypt Society who thought the university was no place for women. Fortunately, James was not of that mind. As I recall, he was always broke.’
‘Yes, his father kept a tight hand on the purse strings; which in a way turned out quite well for James because he’s now absolutely loaded.’
‘He must have taken his wife’s death hard, though,’ said Daniel. ‘To have your wife take poison that way would shatter most husbands.’
‘Yes, you’d think so, but I never heard. And I didn’t send a card of condolence because by the time I heard about it she’d been dead for a couple of months, and I didn’t want to revive bad memories for him.’
‘And you haven’t seen him since?’
‘No.’ She sighed. ‘Mr Heppenstall and James; two men whose wives have their portraits painted by Walter, both with tragic outcomes.’
Lily Wallace sat at the bare wooden table in the interview room in the basement of Scotland Yard. Across from her, on the other side of the table, sat Chief Superintendent Armstrong. Next to him sat the inspector who’d brought her in from Whitechapel, under protest, Inspector Feather.
If the chief superintendent had thought this basement interview room and the two burley police constables who stood grim-faced at either side of the door would intimidate Lily Wallace, he was mistaken, reflected Feather. This was a woman who’d been through the mill of grinding poverty, street violence, early pregnancy, born and brought up in an area where gangsters and drunks and truly terrifying people ruled the streets; this basement room held no terrors for her, as was obvious in the disdainful scorn on her face as she looked at the two senior police officers.
She’s not going to give us anything, thought Feather. All this does is tell her that anything she knows about Joe and his association with the mystery rich man is valuable; and that means valuable to her. It means money.
‘This carriage that Joe was picked up in?’ asked Armstrong, fixing what he hoped would be an intimidating glare on the young widow. ‘Describe it.’
‘I already have,’ said Lily. She jerked her head towards Feather. ‘I told him.’
Armstrong tapped a stubby finger at statement Feather had written out from Lily following their journey back to Whitechapel with Abigail.
‘There’s no details,’ he said.
‘It was dark,’ she said.
‘How many horses?’
She thought, then said: ‘One.’
‘How many wheels? Two or four?’
‘Four,’ she said.
‘Tell us about the driver.’
She shrugged. ‘He was the driver.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘I only ever saw him sitting on his driver’s box, so I don’t know if he was tall or short.’
‘His face,’ scowled Armstrong.
‘I never saw it. He had a scarf pulled up right over his nose. And a hat on his head.’
‘What sort of hat?’
Lily frowned thoughtfully for a moment, then she said: ‘A top hat.’
‘Did the carriage have any emblems on it?’
‘Any what?’
‘Signs. Crests. Sometimes the doors of carriages have shields or feathers or things painted on them.’
She shook her head. ‘If it did, I never saw them. I had my eyes fixed on Joe.’
‘Tell me exactly what you saw that night when you followed Joe.’
‘I’ve already said,’ Lily pointed out, and again she nodded towards Feather. ‘To him.’
‘And this time you tell me. Every detail. From the moment the carriage arrived at your door.’
‘It didn’t arrive at our door,’ Lily corrected him. ‘There was this knock at the door and Joe went to answer it. I heard voices, Joe’s and another man. That turned out to be the driver.’
‘What did the driver say?’
‘I didn’t hear properly. It was more of a grunt. Then Joe came back in the kitchen and said he had to go out. Private work, he said. He took his coat and his bag of butcher’s tools and left. I followed him.’
‘Why?’
‘Because, like I’ve already told this other bloke, your inspector, I thought he might be meeting some woman.’
‘Had he gone off with other women before?’
‘No, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t. My dad was always going off with other women. It’s what men do. I bet you do.’
The chief superintendent bridled and snapped: ‘Watch your mouth. I can have you arrested.’
‘What for?’ demanded Lily. ‘Telling the truth?’
‘What happened next?’ growled Armstrong.
‘Joe got to the carriage and the door opened and I heard this bloke say “Get in”.’
‘What sort of voice? Old? Young?’
‘I couldn’t tell. But it was a posh voice. Then Joe got in, the door shut, and the carriage went off.’
‘And when Joe got back?’
‘I was asleep. I didn’t hear him come in. I guess he slept on the sofa downstairs because that’s where he was when I got up in the morning to sort the kids out.’ She glared at the chief superintendent. ‘Is that it? Can I go home now? I’ve got a husband to bury.’
‘So, another suspect,’ said Daniel as they left Helena Swanwick’s house. ‘Your old friend, James Dowsett, now Lord Powbry.’
‘He wasn’t actually a friend of mine,’ said Abigail. ‘I only really knew him because of the Egypt Society events. Apart from that, he was just someone who was part of the crowd. Although on the fringes of the crowd, really, because, as I said, he was always desperately short of money. And, at the moment, Mr Heppenstall is surely in pride of place.’
‘Only if he has no alibi for the nights when the murders were committed,’ said Daniel.
‘I know someone at the UCH,’ said Abigail. ‘Adam Parks. Someone else who was at Cambridge at the same time as me. He’s an administrator there, which would make him the perfect person to ask if Heppenstall was at the hospital on the nights of the 14th and 17th February.’
‘How will you ask without raising suspicions about Heppenstall?’
‘I’ll think of something,’ said Abigail.
‘And I’ll do the same at the Middlesex,’ said Daniel.
‘You have a contact there?’
‘Not in such an elevated position as yours. Charlie Desmond is the head porter and he knows the comings and goings of everyone at the hospital.’
Lily arrived back in Whitechapel. At least that inspector had been good enough to arrange for her to be taken back, even if it was in a police van. That horrible fat one, the chief superintendent, he’d have made her walk. Rather than set tongues wagging at her being seen getting out of a police van she got the driver to stop well short of her house. As she walked to Mrs Whatmores’, the neighbour who’d taken care of her two kids while she was off with the police, she thought about the interview she’d just had. This rich bloke was the key. Him and Joe had been up to something and, although she hated to admit it, it had to do with those dead women whose bodies they’d found at that art gallery in the West End. And Lily was fairly sure that this rich bloke was the one who’d killed Joe, to silence him, worried that Joe might talk. That had to be what happened. Joe was all edgy before he set off, and he’d told her he was going to see this bloke and he’d see him right. That meant money, maybe so him and Lily and the kids could get away. But instead, Joe had been killed, his throat slashed. Either the rich bloke or his driver had done it.
With Joe dying she was left without a penny to support herself and the kids. There was a way to raise money, of course, there always was, but she’d never gone down that road and she wasn’t going to now. No, she was going to find out who this rich bloke was and get him to cough up. And not just a pound or two to keep her quiet, big money. And if he tried to do her the way he’d done Joe, she’d be ready for him. She’d always carried a knife in case of trouble. It was a way of life in Whitechapel. The thing was now to find out who this rich bloke was. Joe’s mates were the answer. One of them must know who he was.
Charlie Desmond was a short, round, balding man in his late forties. Daniel had known him when he’d been with Scotland Yard’s detective division and often had cause to call at the Middlesex Hospital to question a victim of crime, or sometimes the alleged perpetrator. In his time as a private investigator since he’d left the Metropolitan Police, Daniel often had occasion to call on Desmond for information about a patient, or a member of staff, to establish whether they might have been culpable in whatever case he was investigating, but so far he’d never called to check on anyone as high up the scale as a consultant surgeon.
‘Edmund Heppenstall’ queried Desmond when Daniel asked about him. ‘What’s he supposed to have done? Nothing criminal, I’d stake my life on that. You won’t find a more decent gent anywhere in London. And beyond, I’m proud to say. He’s a credit both to his profession, and to humanity as a whole.’
‘No, no, he’s not suspected of anything,’ Daniel hastily reassured him. ‘It’s someone else we’re looking into who may or may not have involved Mr Heppenstall in something. To help us eliminate him from our enquiries, we need to find out if he was working here on the nights of Sunday February 14th and Wednesday February 17th.’
Desmond thought it over for a moment, running those dates through his mind, then shook his head.
‘No, definitely not. I know because I was on night duty myself both those dates, and I always know if Mr Heppenstall’s here. The nurses and the sisters always seem to have a happier air to them when he’s in the building. They know how good he is, and whatever comes up he can deal with.’
‘According to my contact at the Middlesex, Edmund Heppenstall is a paragon of virtue, worthy of sainthood,’ Daniel reported to Abigail when they met up to exchange notes. ‘But he wasn’t working at the Middlesex on either of the two nights in question, so that means he’s still in the frame.’
‘I’m afraid not,’ said Abigail. ‘Adam checked the records for both nights. Edmund Heppenstall was called in to carry out an emergency operation on the evening of Sunday 14th. After preliminary tests and preparations, he was in the operating theatre from nine o’clock at night until four in the morning. The operation was successful. And there are plenty of witnesses to back it up.’
‘What did he do after four in the morning?’ asked Daniel. ‘He could have still gone in search of Anne-Marie.’
‘After he finished the operation, he went to one of the rest rooms they have set aside for surgeons. He slept there until eight o’clock.’
‘So he couldn’t have killed Anne-Marie.’
‘No.’
Daniel gave a deep sigh. ‘So tomorrow I’ll have to eat humble pie to Fred Abberline.’
‘It’s lucky we found out before we went charging in and accused him,’ commented Abigail.
‘I was never going to accuse him,’ said Daniel. ‘I was going to be subtle.’
‘Subtle?’ Abigail laughed gently. ‘Daniel, I love you very dearly and you have many wonderful attributes, but subtlety is not one of them. You are direct. You wear your heart on your sleeve and your feelings on your face. And I love you for that.’