Mrs Rackstraw, as she would tell anyone who would listen, was not a nosy woman. Her neighbours could do exactly as they liked, and she would scarcely notice a thing. If the brazen hussy across the road was fool enough to let her fancy man out of the side door in the grey light of dawn while her husband was away on business, then that was her own affair; quite literally, Mrs Rackstraw would tell the baker’s boy with a disapproving sniff. If the bailiffs called more frequently two doors down than any delivery boy, then that, too, was none of Mrs Rackstraw’s business; they had carted off a rather nice Sheraton desk last time, she told the charwoman in hushed tones.
But what she would admit to, without demur or condition, was that she would look out for her two young gentlemen to her dying day. As her eyes clouded over with the film of death, they would nevertheless be peeled to watch for danger. So she noticed the man outside straight away, from her vantage point behind the drawing-room curtains. It was true that ‘danger’ was not the first thing that she thought when she saw him. Scrawny, yes. Furtive, certainly. Even underhand. But unless he had the skill to hide an extremely large, heavy and sharp weapon under his coat, he would be little danger, even to a household of women, as they were until the young gentlemen came home. Mrs Rackstraw, though not at all fat, was tall and rangy. The char, finishing off the rough in the kitchen, was seventeen stone at a conservative estimate and had a nasty temper. The between maid – a bone of contention between Mrs Rackstraw and the men who erroneously assumed themselves to be her employers – was small and timid but had once proved to an overly forward butcher’s lad that she had a vicious bite. So they would all be safe enough. But the man’s behaviour was plenty to arouse Mrs Rackstraw’s suspicion. She had been watching him for a while and his movements had taken on the rhythm of a sinister pavane.
She had noticed him first as a shadow under the porch of the house across the way. Surely, she had thought, the hussy hadn’t got herself another fancy man? But no; the shadow had peeled itself from the wall and crossed the road, jinking and jittering around the cabs and carts which trundled through Alsatia all day long. On reaching the pavement on the other side and so close to the wall beneath her window that she could see the nap on his hat, he waited, looking up at the front door almost longingly. Then he walked a few yards to the left, then stopped and turned, walking the same distance to the right and, looking up at the house again, almost met her eyes. She ducked behind the curtain and when she looked again, he was at the bottom of the steps, looking now right, now left.
She stepped away from the window and made her way to the door. The daft girl she had employed as a between maid – young gentlemen of her calibre, she had told them, should not just have a housekeeper; what would people say? The younger, the apple of her eye, if she had been forced to the point, had said that people would say how sensible of them to save money by not having a between maid, but his remark had fallen for once on deaf ears – the daft girl sometimes opened the door when the knocker sounded; more often she didn’t. Time and again, Mrs Rackstraw had hauled her out of the coal cellar where she was hiding, her hands over her ears. Time and again, she had told her that it was her job to answer the door, to take a message, to put visitors in the drawing room, whatever was appropriate. But poor Maisie was not one who could appreciate the subtleties of choices that complex and she preferred to hide.
So Mrs Rackstraw straightened her apron, patted her hair and waited, hands folded, inside the door, ready to whip it open as soon as the knocker hit the wood.
Nothing.
Puzzled, she went back to the window and peered out. And there he was again, on the pavement. Ten feet one way, ten feet back. Up the steps. Down the steps. Ten feet one way, ten feet back. She began to feel quite giddy, but wouldn’t relinquish her post. Danger. Or if not danger, then at the very least an escaped lunatic and if everything she had read in the penny press was true, people like that could have the strength of ten.
The clock in the hall struck twelve. Twelve and a half; she made a note to herself to remember to call the clockmaker around the corner in the Strand to come and check it over. It had never been quite the same since a client of the young gentlemen had gone berserk and set about it with a knobkerrie under the impression it was his mother-in-law. She had said from the start that the man was as mad as a bloater, but they would have it they were the experts and look where it had got them. But twelve or twelve and a half; they would be back for their dinner any minute and they could deal with the lunatic themselves. She took herself off back to the kitchen, to make sure that Maisie had remembered to move the stew over onto the hot plate. September could be treacherous, and her young gentlemen would be ready for something hot.
The lunatic was on his ten feet to the left when Matthew Grand and James Batchelor came swinging around the corner from their office in the Strand. They had had a good morning. Not only had the Duke of Buccleuch paid his bill – finally – but they had also discovered who had been stealing the lead off the roof of St Andrew Undershaft, so had had the blessing of the Bishop of London. Money would be nice, but the wheels of Christendom grind slow, they knew; they could look forward to that sometime in the next decade, probably, but the good wishes of a bishop were as good as money in the bank. Almost.
‘So, James,’ Grand said, bounding up the steps two at a time. ‘I believe I had ten shillings on it being chops for lunch.’
James Batchelor smiled a slow smile. ‘It’s as good as mine, Matthew,’ he said, smugly. ‘It’s Tuesday. It’s never chops on Tuesday; it’s stew or my name is Guillermo Fazackerley.’
Grand turned the doorknob and pushed open the door, releasing a savoury waft of stewed beef. Without another word, he passed a folded banknote behind him to Batchelor, who followed him into the house, laughing.
The lunatic turned at the end of his ten-foot march and looked after them, need and hunger in his red-rimmed eyes.
The stew was, as always, magnificent. Mrs Rackstraw was not perfect, Grand and Batchelor would be the first to admit, but her cooking skills were never in doubt. Grand was still having trouble coming to terms with cow-heel pie, but that was more a failing of English cuisine than the woman herself, so he was prepared to let that one go.
‘Is that lunatic still outside?’ the housekeeper demanded, spooning out seconds.
‘Lunatic?’ Batchelor paused in mid-slurp to check.
‘Yes. Lunatic.’ Sometimes, she wondered how they made a living as detectives at all; they noticed nothing, not even when it was under their noses. ‘You can’t miss him. About so high,’ she held out a hand at about her own head height, ‘scrawny-looking. Pale. Derby hat. Brown coat.’
They both looked at her and shook their heads.
‘He’s been there most of the morning.’
Two identical shrugs.
She sighed and put down her ladle with a splash. ‘You can’t have missed him.’ She sounded almost plaintive, not her usual confident self at all. ‘About so high …’
The dining-room door opened, and Maisie’s red-tipped nose came around it. ‘Mrs Rackstraw,’ she murmured, resolutely refusing to look at either Grand or Batchelor. Her mother had told her without mincing words what happened to girls who looked directly at gentlemen. She had stopped listening in detail when the litany had reached the drawers, but it hadn’t sounded nice at all.
‘Yes, Maisie?’ The woman rounded on her like a cobra. ‘What is it? How many times have I told you to knock first?’
The girl retreated and slammed the door behind her. The three people in the dining room waited patiently. This had happened before.
A timid knock came from the other side of the door.
‘Come in,’ said Mrs Rackstraw, barely containing her irritation.
The dining-room door opened and Maisie’s red-tipped nose came around it. ‘Mrs Rackstraw,’ she murmured, ‘there’s a gentleman at the kitchen door, wants to speak to …’ and her voice died away. Her mother had been unspecific, but she preferred not to use gentlemen’s names in case it brought on a Fate Worse Than Death.
‘Who?’ Matthew Grand said kindly. Maisie nearly died on the spot.
Mrs Rackstraw strode to the door. ‘I’ll go and see, shall I?’ she said, bustling Maisie out in front of her. ‘It’s probably the lunatic.’ And with that, she was gone.
It was the lunatic, but even Mrs Rackstraw, predisposed to see madness seeping from every pore, had to admit that, closer to, he seemed a little less mad, a little more simply upset. He was waiting in the doorway to the kitchen, the way being barred by the char, a woman who could stop – and, so the rumour ran, actually had done so – a runaway horse by the simple expedient of planting her feet firmly and not budging an inch. He looked even smaller and more woebegone when dwarfed by Mrs Gooding; but as that applied to most people, that was little guide. His clothes, Mrs Rackstraw decided on a cursory glance, were good if a little out of date, but as her fashion interest had last been piqued in 1854, that might not have been a very pertinent observation. After a moment, she decided he was fit to be allowed into the house and edged Mrs Gooding aside.
‘Would you care to step this way, sir?’ she said. ‘It is unusual for us to have visitors to the back door.’ She didn’t mean to remonstrate with someone who might yet turn out to be a gentleman, but these things were important; an Alsatia address was after all, when push came to shove, an Alsatia address. That part of London was going up in the world.
He looked both ways and leaned in to whisper out of the corner of his mouth. ‘I didn’t want to be seen,’ he said.
Mrs Rackstraw drew herself up and sniffed. In that case, he would have done well to have dispensed with the marching up and down outside the house, but it wasn’t her place to say so. ‘Name?’
‘Umm …’ the man looked back and forth again. ‘I’d rather not say.’
She looked at him with contempt. So he was a lunatic, after all. ‘I can’t show you in to see my gentlemen without a name, sir,’ she said, firmly.
‘Smith.’
‘Really?’ She looked down her nose at him. She and Mr Rackstraw, may he rest in peace, had once had a memorable holiday in Ramsgate as Mr and Mrs Smith, before they had tied the knot. No one had believed it then and she didn’t believe it now.
‘Well … Wellington-Smith, to be accurate.’
As they had just passed the boot-room on the kitchen side of the green baize, she was unimpressed by his flight of fancy. However, it gave her something to say as, having crossed the black and white tiled hall, she flung open the door to the drawing room and showed him in.
‘Mr Wellington-Smith,’ she said, almost keeping the snort of derision from her voice.
Neither Grand nor Batchelor was feeling very amiable, having been dragged away from their meal without benefit of dessert. Stew was always followed, as night follows day, by treacle sponge and Matthew Grand had learned to love it like an Englishman born and bred. Never mind; a lunatic needn’t take up too much eating time. Grand stepped forward and grabbed the man’s hand and pumped it up and down in a friendly fashion. ‘Mr Wellington-Smith,’ he said and led him to a chair. ‘How may Mr Batchelor and I help you?’ He felt he should make something clear. ‘We do have consulting rooms, you know. Just round the corner, in the Strand.’
‘Yes,’ Wellington-Smith said. ‘I do know. But … this matter is extremely sensitive.’
Batchelor slipped a knowing wink to Grand. Sensitive was their stock-in-trade, but if every wife who wanted her husband followed or every husband who wanted to find out where his wife went on alternate Tuesdays came round to the house, it would be like Piccadilly Circus.
‘Now you’re here,’ Batchelor said, ‘you can speak freely. We guarantee confidentiality at Batchelor and Grand.’
‘At Grand and Batchelor,’ Grand affirmed, ‘we promise not to share any information. Except,’ and he paused, ‘where we discover that a crime has been committed. In that case, we must report it to the police.’
Wellington-Smith leapt up with a strange cry. ‘The police!’ He turned pale. ‘The police? I can’t involve the police! She’s as good as dead if I involve the police!’
Grand and Batchelor looked at each other with wide eyes. This was clearly not a case of a missing poodle, an unreliable business partner or a neighbour whose horse had been eating the hedge.
Grand was first to speak. ‘Dead? Who is as good as dead?’
Wellington-Smith grabbed his hat and made for the door. ‘I had no idea you worked with the police,’ he muttered. ‘I was led to believe you were confidential enquiry agents.’
Grand was more familiar with Mrs Rackstraw’s rather profligate placing of occasional tables and got to the door first and stood in front of it. ‘Totally confidential,’ he assured the man. ‘We have to say the bit about the police because … well, it has happened from time to time that a crime has been discovered as a side issue, one might say, of our enquiries.’
‘Like the dog thing, that time,’ Batchelor chipped in.
‘Indeed. Indeed, the dog thing. So, you can see,’ Grand said, though Wellington-Smith was still trying to dodge round him to the door, ‘it is sometimes our duty to inform the police, but only if there is a crime tangential to our enquires.’
Wellington-Smith, looking mutinous, went back to his seat and stowed his hat on the floor. ‘I really can’t tell the police,’ he said. ‘They said they would kill her if I went to the police.’
‘Kidnapping,’ Batchelor said, nodding.
Wellington-Smith bridled. ‘Who said anything about kidnapping?’ he said, his voice shrill with nervous tension.
‘No one,’ Batchelor said. ‘But as a rule, the only people who threaten to kill anyone if you go to the police are kidnappers.’ He looked across at Grand. ‘You’ll correct me if I’m wrong …’
‘No,’ Grand said. ‘Kidnappers. The only choice, really.’
Wellington-Smith was mollified but still sat looking down at his hands in an agony of indecision.
‘If you tell us your problem,’ Grand prompted, ‘and you don’t want our help, we promise we won’t do anything with the information.’
‘Including going to the police?’
‘Including that.’ Grand wanted to move this conversation along; the afternoon was going to be tedious enough without this drawing information out as if it was an impacted tooth.
Wellington-Smith relaxed a little into his chair and began his story with little preamble. ‘My name, as you may have guessed, is not Wellington-Smith.’
Batchelor, who had already written the name on the outside of his new client notepad crossed it out and tried not to look too annoyed.
‘My name is Byng. Selwyn Byng. You may have heard of me?’
Grand and Batchelor tried to look both intelligent and noncommittal – they had never heard the name before in any context.
‘My family are timber importers, with warehouses down the Thames. Sillitoe, Byng and Son, Finest Siberian Timber.’ He looked from one to the other but saw no sign of recognition. ‘Never mind. I am “Son” you might say, also Selwyn, after my grandfather, who started the business. My father runs it now and I work for …’ he swallowed the word, ‘alongside him. And of course, all of it will be mine one day.’
‘And your son’s,’ Batchelor said, pleasantly.
Byng gave vent to a bloodcurdling howl that made Grand almost lose his stew. ‘Ah, the pain that gives me, Mr Batchelor. If only I will one day be the proud father of a boy to bear the proud name of Byng.’
There seemed little to be said by way of small talk following this outburst and so the enquiry agents waited for him to gather himself together and continue his tale.
‘I married less than two years ago, Emilia, the daughter of old Josiah Westmoreland.’ He paused but decided that these two knew nothing of the great importers of London and explained without waiting to be asked. ‘Westmoreland tea importers are one of the primary companies in the field; one day, their name will ring alongside such greats as Tetley, but for now, they do well enough. They wholesale tea to workhouses, hospitals and lunatic asylums, a sadly growing market, though not for Westmoreland of course.’ He forced a laugh. ‘Emilia and I were scarcely married before Josiah passed away.’ He lowered his eyes and seemed to take a pause to recover himself. ‘Tragic,’ he muttered. ‘Tragic.’
‘I think I remember that,’ Grand said. ‘Wasn’t he crushed by a falling bale of tea?’ Batchelor looked at him aghast. This was where the gulf of the Atlantic sometimes showed itself – ‘crushed’ was perhaps not the best word to use when speaking of a man’s father-in-law’s sad demise. Although even he could see that ‘passed away’ was not perhaps the most appropriate way of describing a death by crushing. There was such a thing as being a tad too genteel.
‘Indeed, Mr Grand,’ Byng said at last. ‘Crushed is the word. He was unrecognizable, save for his half-hunter, which was still going.’ He foraged in his waistcoat pocket and fished out a watch. ‘This very one.’
Batchelor felt a little better – it was a touch ghoulish to carry around a watch prised from the crushed solar plexus of a loved one, so perhaps he hadn’t minded the word after all.
‘Emilia was of course devastated and so, although the patter of tiny feet had been her overwhelming wish, she felt that, as she was in mourning, it would be inappropriate. So we …’ he looked up and seemed to change his mind. ‘So we decided to wait a while.’ His smile grew forced. ‘Abstinence does no one any harm, gentlemen, no harm at all. However, to make things easier, Emilia has been staying with her aunt, Jane Moriarty, in Eastbourne for the last two months. This week, it will be a year since the accident and so, to our mutual delight, she was due to get home on Monday. Imagine my joy as I went to meet her at the station.’
It was a tricky pause in the conversation, but it seemed time for a small interjection. Batchelor leapt into the breach. ‘It must have been a wonderful moment.’ His brain was whirling. Had she arrived looking rather more with child than a year’s abstinence could explain? Had she arrived with an actual child? Not arrived at all? Arrived on the arm of … the possibilities seemed practically endless.
‘Her train came and went and so did the next three but, alas, no Emilia.’
Batchelor tried not to look smug, but it didn’t seem much of a puzzle, particularly one which was especially sensitive.
‘What did arrive, eventually, was an urchin carrying a note. This note.’ Byng delved into his pocket and brought out an envelope, folded in two. He handed it to Grand, who spread it out on the table at his elbow and read it through. It didn’t take long; the note had been made up of letters cut from a newspaper and was a mixture of whole words and individual letters. Batchelor, looking over his partner’s shoulder, thought he recognized the typeface of the Telegraph.
There was no salutation. The note began, ‘We’ve got yur wif. If you wunt to see her again, you must pay fiv thousand pund. We’ll let you know were to leve it. Wait for our next leter. You’ll get it at your house. No plice or she dies.’
The two enquiry agents read it through several times and then sat down again, facing their client. ‘Have you had another letter yet?’ Grand asked.
Byng shook his head.
Batchelor held out his hand for the letter. He wanted to give it another look through – though not an expert in ransom notes, there was something about this one that seemed a little strange to him and he needed to work out what.
‘Could it be a prank?’ Grand asked.
‘A prank?’ Byng was horrified. ‘Who would do such a thing?’
‘Mrs Byng, perhaps?’ Grand was treading on very sensitive ground.
Selwyn Byng drew himself up and looked down his nose at Grand. He was American, so he could perhaps be excused. ‘My wife,’ he announced coldly, ‘does not have a sense of humour. Of any kind. Really; she would be most distressed.’
Grand, rather more of a man of the world than Batchelor, suddenly felt deeply sorry for Selwyn Byng. He appeared to be married to a nightmare in human form; a woman who would rather stay with an aunt in Eastbourne than sleep with her husband and who also had no sense of humour. What would be the point of being married to her at all?
‘She has her position to consider. She is, after all, heiress to a considerable tea fortune.’
Ah.
‘Although of course, not until she is thirty-five. Her father had very strong views on the capacity of the fair sex to manage money and business and so, rather than put such a terrible burden on his only child, he set up a trust for her, until she should be of sufficient maturity to cope.’
‘How old is your wife now, Mr Byng, if I might ask?’ Batchelor had stopped re-reading the ransom note and looked up.
‘Twenty-two.’
‘So she has a while to wait until she needs to take up the reins of the business,’ Grand observed.
‘Thirteen years, yes,’ Byng agreed. ‘But she takes it very seriously already, believe me, gentlemen. A tea empire is not something that you can wear lightly.’
The ex-journalist in James Batchelor winced at the grim metaphor but he moved on. ‘I don’t think that this note is a prank anyway. For one thing, it isn’t even slightly funny. For another, it has been made by someone who is trying just a little too hard to be convincing. A joker wouldn’t take the effort.’
‘What do you mean?’ Byng asked.
‘Well, the spelling is a little random,’ Batchelor said. ‘Simple words, such as “wife” are misspelled. But more difficult ones, such as “thousand” are correct. Besides that, the grammar is right; I’ve seen worse grammar than this turned in as copy on a very reputable paper.’ Batchelor’s Telegraph days were never far away.
‘So, what does that mean?’ Byng was confused.
‘I think,’ Grand said, looking his colleague in the eye, ‘I think it means, Mr Byng, that you should go home and wait for the next letter. And we’ll be right behind you.’