Grand and Batchelor met Maisie just as she turned into the Strand.
Grand advanced on her kindly. He worried about the poor little soul; she didn’t look fit to be out on her own and he wondered for a moment if she was running away from what she presumably thought of as home. ‘Is everything okay, Maisie?’ he asked, and her heart lurched.
‘Oh, yes, Mr Grand, sir,’ she breathed. ‘Mrs Rackstraw says to come home straight away, and you, Mr Batchelor, because there’s a woman.’
They both waited politely for more detail, for example, what the woman might be doing but it was clear that that was it; there was no more.
‘Is the woman threatening Mrs Rackstraw?’ Batchelor ventured, knowing even as he spoke how unlikely that was.
Maisie shook her head so that the loose bun at the nape of her neck swung madly back and forth.
‘Is the woman … in trouble?’ Grand had a go.
Again, Maisie shook her head. The little old lady was certainly self-possessed and well able to look after herself; Maisie knew that when she undressed tonight, she would have a bruise where the carved bill of the duck which made up the handle of the umbrella she had wielded had tapped her on the chest. Even in her own head, she dropped her voice at ‘chest’. Her mother had always made that kind of thing very clear, usually with a clip round the ear.
While the enquiry agents thought of the next useful question, they turned Maisie around and headed back home. They could think as they walked, even if Maisie couldn’t. Batchelor suddenly had a brainwave.
‘Maisie, is the woman young? Pretty?’
Maisie didn’t have to think this one through. Even the younger one wasn’t what you could call pretty. She shook her head.
Grand tried a long shot. ‘Did she have all her fingers?’ He knew that to the young, youth and age were somewhat flexible.
Maisie was horrified. The woman had worn gloves, so it was hard to tell, but still … she nodded her head emphatically.
The two men decided to stop asking questions and just get home as fast as possible so they each tucked one of Maisie’s arms through theirs and set off at a jog-trot. That night, checking for her bruise, Maisie would remember that half mile as the best in her life.
When they got back to the house, Maisie dived down into the area and let the men go in through the front door. Batchelor used his latchkey and as he wrestled it out of the stiff lock, Grand bent and picked up something from the mat and shoved it absent-mindedly into his pocket.
‘Mrs Rackstraw?’ he called. ‘Mrs …’ but before the housekeeper could appear, the door to the sitting room flew open and Miss Moriarty stood there, every outmoded ribbon a-bristle.
‘Mr Grand,’ she said. ‘You have been an unconscionable time. You were expecting me, surely?’
‘Miss Moriarty.’ Grand was nonplussed. ‘I’m very sorry. Did we have an appointment?’
‘No,’ the old lady snapped. ‘But I assumed as the picture of Molly had appeared in the newspapers, you would want to see me.’ She tilted her head back and looked from Grand to Batchelor and back again.
Batchelor was as confused as his partner. ‘Picture?’
‘Molly?’ Grand chimed in.
Miss Moriarty was annoyed. Beyond annoyed, in fact, but she didn’t have the vocabulary to let them know it. ‘I am very annoyed, gentlemen,’ she said. ‘Enid and I have travelled up from Eastbourne, at no little discomfort and, if I may be so bold as to discuss finances, at no small expense. And now, I find you are not expecting me.’ She gave a snort and gathered herself together for a huge shrug which used her entire body from her toes to the top of her head. ‘I must ask myself what kind of business you purport to run.’
Grand opened his mouth, but she hadn’t finished.
‘I don’t expect you are even looking for my niece Emilia any more, are you? No. I thought not.’
Batchelor had spotted a flaw in her conversation. ‘I thought you mentioned someone named Molly.’
‘Of course I did, you stupid man,’ Miss Moriarty said, raising the umbrella ready to strike. ‘Molly Edwards. Emilia’s maid.’
Things were beginning to fall into place. ‘You’re here about the maid,’ Batchelor said.
The old woman’s eyes opened wide and she was lost for words but only for a moment. ‘Did I not just say so?’ She turned to Enid, waiting patiently at her shoulder as always. ‘Enid. Did I not just say so?’ Her cheeks were beginning to look a little purple.
‘Miss Moriarty did mention Molly,’ Enid said, in calming tones. ‘And I think, if I may be so bold, gentlemen, that a sit down and a cup of tea …’ she caught her mistress’s eye, ‘… with a spot of something warming in it, perhaps, just for the cold, you know …’
Grand jumped to attention and switched on the old down-home charm. ‘Miss Moriarty,’ he said, his accent thick enough to spread on toast, ‘I’ll call for some tea of course. There is something to go in it right there, on the sideboard. Something to eat, ladies? Scones? Cake?’
The two Eastbourne ladies looked at each other and twittered. A little cake never went amiss. Enid nodded. ‘Cake, yes. Cake would be nice.’
Grand stepped into the hall to call down for Mrs Rackstraw but, as ever, she scared the bejabbers out of him by stepping out of the shadows at his elbow. ‘I’ll bring some up, sir,’ she said, all the venom of a ruined afternoon in the last syllable. Grand returned to the sitting room, wondering again whether it was worth keeping her, even for her pig’s feet pie or whatever it was that sent Batchelor into a happy stupor.
‘It’s on its way,’ he said, ushering the women to seats by the fire. ‘Now, let’s start again, shall we? You’re here to tell us about Molly’s picture in the paper …’
The Gothic monstrosity that was Holloway Gaol stood in Parkhurst Road. Poplars and rhododendrons screened its gates but the red-brick towers beyond held inmates who had little interest in botany. Increasingly, because of the way society was going and they now allowed women to vote in municipal elections, female prisoners were taking over the prison world.
That, in a way, was why Daddy Bliss was there that day; not in search of an inmate who had blotted her escutcheon, but of one of the staff, who had not.
She hadn’t changed a scrap. And scrapping was what Bridie O’Hara did for a living. She was actually the Chief Wardress at Holloway, but it amounted to the same thing. Bliss had not seen the woman for years and yet he recognized the set of her shoulders and the width of her back even in silhouette on the first landing. Her voice hadn’t changed either. Someone was singing in her cell, ‘Villikins and His Dinah’ but it ended in a falsetto shriek that a eunuch would have been proud of. Bridie O’Hara didn’t approve of singing. Not on her watch.
He saluted as she swept past him and he waited until they were alone in the wardresses’ office. ‘Bridie, my little vixen.’ He let his arm creep around the solidity of her waist.
Her response was short and sharp and definitely not in the Women Wardens’ Handbook. It was accompanied by a slap round the side of the head. ‘Don’t you “vixen” me, Daddy Bliss; I’m not in the mood.’
‘But, Bridie …’
She placed her hands on her ample hips and scowled at him, like a bulldog chewing a wasp. ‘Bridie, my arse,’ she growled. ‘That’s Wardress O’Hara to you, Inspector. Or are Mrs Bliss and all the little Blisses a figment of my imagination?’
‘Now, B … Wardress O’Hara,’ he got as close to her as he dared. ‘I had hoped we could let bygones be bygones.’
‘Would that be the bygone when you failed to turn up at St Bartholomew’s-the-Less on Wednesday 13 June 1862? The very same day that I was there in my best dress with a bridesmaid in tow and a nice old boy of a vicar? You’re lucky I didn’t do you for breach of promise.’
‘I am,’ Bliss agreed. ‘Very lucky indeed. But there’s been much water under Waterloo Bridge since then.’
‘Ah.’ She let her hands fall. ‘So this is not a social call, then? Mrs Bliss, inexplicably, hasn’t left you. And you haven’t come to rekindle the flame.’
‘Bridie,’ he said softly, ‘when I hear your Irish lilt …’
‘Bliss!’ she snapped. ‘Come to the point.’
‘Escapees.’ The inspector knew when it was time to obey an order. ‘Or the recently released.’
She pursed her lips. ‘You’re trying to place that corpse in the Thames, aren’t you?’ she asked.
Bliss smiled and shook his head. ‘As smart as you are beautiful,’ he said. She ignored him and flipped open a ledger on her desk. The writing was copperplate, the photographs unflattering.
‘Take your pick,’ she said. ‘These five are the latest releases. But the last two have got out since your body turned up, so you’re looking at these three.’
Bliss was. Carmen Valladolid was black as his patrol jacket, so he could discount her. Annie Parminter was six foot two with a hare lip. He had to look twice at Veronica Cartwright. The short-cropped hair was certainly a possibility, but the details recorded a withered left arm, so Bliss had to let her go too.
‘They’re all ticket-of-leave women, of course,’ Bridie went on, ‘so we have addresses on them all. If you’ve got access to some real policemen, they could check for you.’
Bliss ignored the slur. ‘And the escapees?’
Bridie paused for a moment until the blood stopped pounding in her ears. ‘Escapees?’ she muttered. ‘Escapees? This isn’t Broadmoor, you know.’
Daddy Bliss was aware of that, but he found the comparison odd anyway. ‘Broadmoor?’ he repeated.
‘Lunatic asylum,’ the wardress explained, as though to an idiot.
‘Yes,’ Bliss said. ‘I know. I wondered …’
‘Well, they do let people escape. I’m thinking of the murderer Bisgrove. Scarpered over the roof and just vanished. He’s been on the run for weeks now, months, even.’
‘We haven’t seen him on the river,’ Bliss assured her.
‘Nobody’s seen him,’ Bridie said. ‘That’s not the point. What I’m saying is, at Holloway, nobody gets out. Nobody at all.’
And she cracked her knuckles, by way of confirmation.
Miss Moriarty had, in the end, been quite succinct in telling her tale. A slug of brandy to within an inch of the top of the teacup had made her rather less bellicose and – for the moment at least – rather more forthcoming and less judgemental. Enid would have to reap the whirlwind of the aftermath as they went back to Eastbourne, but she was used to that and knew that it would bring the advantage of an evening of peace with her employer spark out on the sofa.
The old lady could tell them little about the maid, save that she had been with Emilia for some while without a blot on her character. Being found in the river without certain essential body parts Miss Moriarty was prepared to overlook – it was thoughtless, true, to bring such unwonted attention to the name of Westmoreland. She had broken off at this point to smack her lips and look enquiringly at Grand.
‘Is this a Westmoreland special blend?’ she asked, sucking it through her teeth and looking wistful.
‘It is,’ said Grand, impressed. ‘In fact, Mr Teddy Westmoreland blended it just for me and it is called, in fact, Grand Blend.’
Miss Moriarty’s eyes opened wide. ‘What an honour,’ she breathed and then blushed. ‘I have a blend named after me as well, you know; well, not after me, but in my honour.’
Batchelor, who had rather tired of Grand flashing his special blend status about, smiled thinly. ‘What is it called?’ he asked. Surely not Annoying Old Bat – that just wouldn’t sell well at all.
‘Amore,’ the old lady said, lowering her eyes. Then, she looked up at them defiantly. ‘It didn’t work out.’
‘Ah.’ Grand looked at Batchelor, eyebrows raised. Would someone please change the subject? After what seemed like an age, his help came in the shape of someone at the door.
Batchelor beat him to it by leaping up and, with a cry of, ‘I’ll get that,’ left the room at a trot.
Miss Moriarty, recovered from her sentimental moment, began to gather up her umbrella, bag and other sundries. ‘I hope I have been of help, Mr Grand,’ she said. ‘I appreciate that this may have brought us little further in your search for poor, dear Emilia. I fear that the finding of Molly’s body must only make us think the worst. But hope springs eternal, does it not?’
‘Indeed it does, Miss Moriarty,’ Grand said, extending a hand. ‘Can I call you a cab to take you to the station?’
Miss Moriarty inclined her head. Colonials were so polite. ‘Thank you, Mr Grand,’ she said. ‘I had thought to visit my nephew-in-law, but I think that your tea may have been a little strong.’ She put an age-crazed hand to her brow. ‘I feel a little giddy.’
Grand caught Enid’s eye but the maid gave nothing away. Stone-faced was an understatement. ‘Perhaps you should go straight home. We could visit Mr Byng for you, to give him your—’
‘Regards,’ Miss Moriarty broke in. ‘My regards. Not kind regards. Just … regards.’ She pressed a lace handkerchief to her lips. ‘I blame him, Mr Grand,’ she said, in a strangled mutter.
Grand’s eyes almost popped out of his head. ‘Blame him for … murder?’
‘Good grief, no,’ she said, fetching him one with her umbrella. ‘I mean for causing poor Emilia to go missing. If it wasn’t for his …’ she closed her eyes tight and raised her chin resolutely, ‘… carnal, animal lusts, she wouldn’t have come to visit me, would not have been on that train where clearly a maniac was lurking. Poor Molly would still be with us.’ She glared at Grand. ‘In short, if he had been at all able to control himself, we wouldn’t be here having this conversation.’ She looked towards the door. ‘What has happened to Mr Batchelor? Did you not have someone at the door?’
Grand frowned. She was quite right. ‘I’ll go and check …’
As he spoke, the door opened and Batchelor sidled in. ‘My apologies, Miss Moriarty,’ he said. ‘I just need a short chat with my colleague. Would you?’ He tossed his head in the direction of the door, his smile a rictus grin.
Grand, nodding his apology, followed him into the hall. ‘What?’ he snapped.
‘We have visitors,’ Batchelor announced.
‘I know.’
‘Not them. Two other visitors. The Westmoreland brothers.’
‘Well, why didn’t you show them …’ Memory dawned. ‘Ah, I see. It didn’t work out.’
Batchelor cast his eyes up. It always dawned eventually. ‘Yes. I thought perhaps it still rankled.’
Grand was surprised. ‘Still? Surely, it must be … I was going to say centuries, but decades, at least?’
‘Even so.’ Batchelor looked towards the closed door. ‘Still delicate, perhaps?’
‘You’re right. I’ll show the ladies out. You keep the gents busy. Did they say why they were here?’
‘Mmm …’ Batchelor had heard the door opening and was stuck for anything intelligent to say.
‘Why who was here?’ Miss Moriarty might be old and a touch raddled, but she had the hearing of a twelve-year-old.
‘Umm … clients,’ Batchelor said. ‘Confidential, you know the sort of thing … umm …’
Miss Moriarty looked at him with gimlet eyes. ‘You look very guilty, young man,’ she observed. ‘And in my experience, young men of your stamp don’t look guilty for no reason.’ She tapped him smartly around the ankles with her umbrella and crossed the hall to fling open the study door. The two men thus revealed froze; they looked like a tableau vivant, just not very vivant.
‘Teddy. Micah.’ Her tones were cut glass and froze the blood.
‘Miss Moriarty.’ The brothers spoke in unison, lifting their hats politely.
She shut the door and looked with clamped lips at the enquiry agents. ‘I believe I will go straight to the station. I believe my nephew-in-law lives at Milner Street, number eight. Do you know it?’
Grand looked at Batchelor. He knew London like the back of his hand and Grand had never really bothered with the minutiae. After all, one didn’t keep a Londoner born and bred and bark oneself.
‘Joins Cadogan Square and Lennox Gardens, doesn’t it?’ he checked.
She nodded. ‘It is just on the corner, where Clabon Mews crosses the street,’ she said. ‘I have no idea how he affords such an establishment. I would imagine that his father helps him out, though that old skinflint would see his own mother starve before he gave her a penny. Or at least, that has always been my impression. I don’t gossip, so I can tell you no more.’ She flung an acid glance at the closed door behind which Mr Teddy and Mr Micah cowered. ‘I will wish you good-day, gentleman,’ she said. ‘I hope your … visitors … help you.’
And with that, with Enid in her wake like an enormous liner propelling a tiny tug, she swept out.
Teddy and Micah Westmoreland sat on either side of the study fire, as if they had been there all their lives. The glow from the flames lit their soft white hair and their pink cheeks; they looked like two men without a care in the world until they looked up and then it showed in their eyes.
‘I am so sorry about that,’ Batchelor said, crossing the room to take a chair next to Micah. ‘She just …’
‘Oh, yes, she would,’ Teddy said softly. ‘Jane was always very headstrong. And beautiful, in her day.’
Micah leaned forward. ‘Don’t dwell, Teddy,’ he advised. ‘It didn’t work out and that’s that. Cousins marrying. Not a good idea. It might have been all right for the Egyptian pharaohs but that was so then. Surprised the prayer book doesn’t have something to say on the matter. Anyway,’ he cleared his throat and didn’t look as his brother used a discreet handkerchief to dab a corner of his eye, ‘we’re here on rather more germane matters, gentlemen. We have received this.’ He rummaged in a pocket and came up empty. ‘Do you have it, Teddy?’
The other brother looked perplexed and then also rummaged. ‘Sorry, Micah,’ he said. ‘I do have it, yes.’ He pulled out a piece of paper which he smoothed out on his knee before passing it to Grand, who had pulled up a chair from behind the desk. ‘We got this this morning. We thought … well, we thought you should see it.’
Grand leaned over with the paper so that Batchelor could see it. In crude, pencilled letters, the message was clear. ‘If You wunt to see yur nice agen, Yu’d better let that money go. No Trust is Wurth a Lif. Believe me. If Yu dont do it, she’s ded.’
Batchelor took it and folded it neatly. ‘May we keep this?’ he asked and both men nodded.
‘I never want to touch it again,’ Teddy said with a shiver. ‘It has made me feel quite unwell.’
‘Was there an address?’ Grand asked. ‘A postmark, even?’
‘No. There wasn’t even an envelope. Someone gave it to the old watchman on the main road outside the warehouse and he brought it round.’
Grand, who had met the man, held out little hope but asked anyway. ‘Could he describe the man who gave it to him?’
Teddy snorted. ‘He couldn’t describe his own reflection,’ he said. ‘We should move him on, really, but he does no harm. But for once even he had to notice who he was talking to. It was a woman.’
‘A woman?’ Grand and Batchelor spoke in perfect unison.
‘Yes. She was dressed in black from head to toe, he said. But a fine figure of a woman, apparently. Tall, with … what was that word he used, Micah?’
‘Kettledrums, Teddy.’ Micah turned to Grand. As a foreigner, he might need translation. ‘That means she had a fine pair of …’
‘Yes.’ Grand smiled. ‘I do know. So, she was a good looker, was she, this woman?’
‘He didn’t see her face. She was wearing a veil. But if you ask me, he was too taken up with her—’
‘Yes, Micah, thank you.’ Teddy took back the initiative. ‘Of course, with that old fool, who knows how long he had had the note? He said she had just given it to him, but it could have been days. He’s as mad as a March hare and drunk most of the time.’
Batchelor asked the question which was hanging in the air. ‘And have you released the money?’
‘Alas,’ Micah said. ‘We can’t. I know that sounds as though we don’t want to, but believe me, we do. We want to have Emilia back as much as Selwyn …’
‘More, probably,’ muttered Teddy.
‘Tush,’ said his brother, flapping a hand at him. ‘You don’t know that.’
‘Never liked him.’
‘No, perhaps not. But she did, and that’s the main thing. Where was I?’
‘Wanting to have Emilia back,’ Grand supplied.
‘Yes. But we can’t release the money. It is tied up tight. The trust matures on her thirty-fifth birthday or on her death. And that’s it. It is an endowment, you see. It doesn’t exist as such, by which I mean there is no pot of money, as the writer of this seems to think. We don’t have it in a sock under the mattress. The money left by our cousin was used to buy an insurance policy which will mature on the thirty-first of August 1888 and not a moment sooner. Except, as we have said, on the occasion of her death.’
‘The letter-writer certainly has a very simplistic way of looking at things,’ Grand pointed out. Money, making it and moving it about was what his family had done for generations and to him, the endowment was the obvious way of leaving money to a loved one. But he could see that people who were not in that world could quite literally believe in the sock under the mattress.
‘He seems to be a very simple soul all around,’ Teddy said. ‘Look at the writing. The spelling.’
‘We have,’ Batchelor said. ‘In the other notes we have seen, it is the same; the letters are cut out of the Telegraph but even so, the misspellings are there. But look here … and here …’ He picked up the note and pointed to a couple of words, ‘This “simple soul” can spell “believe” and also gets the punctuation right in “she’s”. We think the writer of these notes is as educated as we are, gentlemen, he’s just trying to look simple.’
Grand pressed his lips together in thought. The next thing he said would cause offence, he just knew it. ‘It could be a she, of course,’ he said, quietly.
Teddy and Micah took offence. ‘Do you mean,’ Micah said in a voice made high and clipped by tension, ‘that you believe it to be from Emilia?’
‘I didn’t say that,’ Grand said. ‘But it should be something to consider, don’t you think?’
‘No,’ Teddy said. ‘No, I don’t think it is worthy of even a second’s thought.’
‘We have some upsetting news,’ Batchelor said, gently. ‘We have just heard from Miss Moriarty that a dead woman fished out of the Thames is Emilia’s maid, Molly Edwards.’
The two tea-blenders were struck dumb, then Micah recovered. ‘Are you suggesting,’ he said, and his tone left the enquiry agents in no doubt that he was furiously angry, ‘are you suggesting that Emilia could be responsible for all this?’
‘It has to be considered …’ Grand began.
‘No, no it does not,’ Micah thundered. ‘Emilia is an angel, the loveliest girl you could wish to meet. She doesn’t have a dishonest or cruel bone in her body.’
‘That’s what we’ve heard, but—’
‘But nothing.’ Teddy got up and slapped his hat onto his head. ‘Look elsewhere, sirs. It is nothing to do with Emilia. Some evil person has her in captivity, or worse. That’s where you should be looking, Mr Grand, Mr Batchelor. Among the worst that London has to offer.’
Micah took up the tale. ‘Scour the rookeries, Mr Grand. Look among the lowest in the land. That’s where you will find our Emilia.’
‘Alive or dead,’ Teddy said, with a catch in his voice.
With tears in their eyes, the old men stumbled from the room and, pausing only to tussle briefly with Mrs Rackstraw who was polishing the door knob in the pursuance of her duties, left the house silent and wondering.
Batchelor took up the ransom note again and looked at it closely. Grand poked the fire in a desultory way. They had a lot to consider.
‘If you ask me,’ Mrs Rackstraw said, poking her head around the door, ‘those two would take another look. A bit too anxious to put somebody else in the frame, in my opinion.’
When neither man replied, she gave one of her enormous sniffs, which, though wordless, said so much and went back to her polishing – there was no way now to reclaim her very interrupted afternoon.
After a while, Batchelor spoke. ‘Could she be right?’ he asked.
‘I’m seldom wrong,’ the housekeeper told him, through the door.
‘Is he in?’ Batchelor asked with one foot on the gangplank of the Royalist. ‘Is he out? Is he shaking it all about?’
Constable Brandon looked down from the deck rail.
‘It’s all right, Lloyd,’ Grand said. ‘Remember my colleague, Mr Batchelor? He doesn’t get out much himself. We were hoping to see the inspector.’
There was a muffled roar from the hull and a flock of seagulls heard it and took off, screaming, preferring to find a nice quiet storm somewhere out to sea.
‘Yes,’ Brandon grimaced. ‘He’s in.’
Grand and Batchelor clattered onto the planking and disappeared into the hatch. The daylight barely reached here on the waterline and a lantern flickered, swaying gently to and fro as the Abode of Bliss groaned and swung at its moorings. The great man himself looked up at them over a pair of rimless spectacles, the ones he wore in court to make him look more intellectual.
‘Gentlemen,’ he swept the glasses off and threw them down on his table. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’
‘We know who the dead woman was.’ Grand got straight to the point. ‘Mine, I mean; not yours.’
‘Really?’ Bliss raised an eyebrow. ‘And how do you know that?’
Batchelor produced a newspaper from his pocket. ‘The Eastbourne Intelligencer,’ he said, throwing it down on Bliss’s table, ‘if that isn’t a contradiction in terms.’
Bliss put his glasses back on and picked it up. ‘The Wessex Truss Company?’ He felt he had to ask.
‘Next page,’ Batchelor explained.
‘Ah.’ Bliss found it and ferreted among the papers on the Canterbury. ‘Snap,’ he said, passing a newspaper of his own across the desk.
‘What’s that?’ Grand asked.
‘That,’ Batchelor sighed, ‘is the Illustrated Police News. The last I looked it was not written by policemen nor did it carry much in the way of news. All we can agree on is that it is illustrated.’
‘Never mind about all that,’ Bliss said. ‘I had that likeness placed in a number of newspapers in the hope that someone would recognize the deceased.’ He frowned at Grand. ‘Odd that it should be the self-same person who found her in the first place.’
‘Not guilty, Inspector,’ the American said, rearranging a discarded oilskin in order to find a seat. ‘The woman you want is Miss Moriarty.’
‘Moriarty?’ Bliss repeated. ‘What a ludicrous name. Should I know her?’
‘I doubt it.’ Batchelor perched on the corner of the table. ‘Eastbourne born and bred, apparently.’
‘Good for her,’ Bliss nodded. ‘What’s the link?’
Grand took a deep breath then let it go with a hiss. ‘How much do you want to know?’
Bliss narrowed his eyes at him and leaned forward. ‘Mr Grand,’ he said, heavily. ‘I am a rather senior policeman in the service of the Queen, God bless her. If that still leaves you in doubt, the answer to your question is; everything.’
Grand took a breath again and started, enumerating points on his fingers and keeping an eye on Batchelor, in case he left anything out. ‘We were approached by one Selwyn Byng, a timber importer, whose wife had been kidnapped …’
‘And he didn’t come to the police because …?’ Bliss was not going to make this easy.
‘Because the people who had kidnapped his wife said he wasn’t to; if he did, his wife would be killed.’
Bliss thought for a moment, then nodded. ‘Go on.’
‘We weren’t at all convinced, to be absolutely honest, that any such crime had taken place. In fact, we were almost certain that his wife had left of her own free will.’
Batchelor held up a finger and interrupted. ‘She had been staying with her aunt in Eastbourne …’
‘Miss Moriarty?’ Bliss hazarded and the two enquiry agents nodded their approval of his detective skills.
‘… because,’ Grand resumed, ‘she didn’t want to be tempted into … what’s that word you use here when you want to be polite?’
‘Congress,’ Batchelor supplied.
‘That’s the one. I don’t think of it that way, as you might expect. Tempted into congress with her husband, because she was in mourning for her father, who had been squashed by a load of tea.’
Bliss leaned back. He had told less unlikely tales to any one of the numerous little Blisses many a time. He was enjoying himself, in a strange sort of way. These two were good company, you had to give them that.
‘At least,’ Batchelor continued, ‘that was the husband’s story. But there were holes in it and Miss Moriarty, the aunt, told us about the maid.’
‘Any maid in particular?’ Bliss asked, wryly.
‘Mrs Byng’s maid. She had travelled with her up to London but Mr Byng hadn’t mentioned her at all. So we more or less told him to go away and stop bothering us.’
‘That was very … altruistic of you,’ Bliss remarked. ‘Most gentlemen in your line of work will take on any job for the per diem and expenses.’
Batchelor pulled a face and gestured with his thumb at Grand. ‘Private means,’ he mouthed.
Bliss glanced across but Grand didn’t seem to have taken offence. ‘That must be nice,’ he acknowledged. ‘But if it makes you more honest, then I’m all for it. So … you told him to go away and …?’
‘He came back a day or so later with a finger.’
Bliss leaned forward again. ‘It’s all beginning to take shape,’ he said. ‘This would be the finger you brought to Dr Kempster.’
‘It would,’ Grand agreed. ‘We wondered if it might go with your own bits and bobs, but it was too fresh.’
Brandon, who had been eavesdropping on the deck, moved away and leaned over the side for a while.
‘Then I found the other body, of course,’ Grand said. ‘And as she had no hands, we can’t tell if the finger was hers.’
‘So, that’s easy then,’ Bliss said, standing up and reaching for his cap. ‘It’s the wife. Why didn’t you say so?’
‘Because it isn’t,’ Batchelor said. ‘It’s the maid. Miss Moriarty and her maid, Enid, recognized her at once. Unfortunately, they don’t know much about her, except that her name is Molly Edwards and she had been Mrs Byng’s maid since before she got married. Enid seemed quite upset by it all; I understand they had got quite friendly while Mrs Byng was visiting.’
‘Was it the wife’s finger, though?’ Bliss was trying not to get confused.
‘Byng was adamant it was. It had her ring on and he seemed very sure. But I’m not certain whether anyone could tell from such a small part, unless there is some handy scarring, or something.’ Grand was really thinking aloud.
‘This Byng is a timber importer, you say. I think I should go round and have a word.’
Batchelor hopped down from the table and dislodged a teetering pile of files. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered, trying to catch them. ‘Were they in any particular order?’
Bliss shrugged. Brandon was in charge of that kind of thing, insofar as Brandon could be in charge of anything. ‘Possibly. Now, which timber importers?’
‘Could we go first?’ Grand asked. ‘He’s a rather nervy gentleman and if you suddenly confront him, I can’t really predict how he will react.’
Bliss looked thunderous. He didn’t really believe in nerves, having never been aware of having any himself. A nervy suspect was a collared suspect, in his book. ‘Well, I …’
‘Just give us an hour,’ Batchelor said.
Bliss looked at the clock. ‘I’ll give you until tomorrow,’ he said. ‘First thing.’
‘That’s very generous,’ Grand acknowledged. ‘If we find anything else out, shall we …?’
‘Keep it to yourselves until tomorrow? Yes, that would be marvellous,’ Bliss agreed. Even policemen had the right to some time off and he had had his conscience pricked by his meeting with Bridie O’Hara. Mrs Bliss and all the little Blisses didn’t see half enough of him.
‘We’ll do that thing,’ Grand said and he and Batchelor made their way back into the open air, bidding a farewell to Brandon’s heaving back.