THERE WAS A spider on the ceiling. It was quite a big one, but I only spotted it when I raised my eyes heavenward. If I had not already braced myself I might have found Martha Ryan’s statement mildly amusing. More likely I would have wondered from which nursery she had absconded. My first thought was that she could not be serious. Had somebody sent her to play a practical joke upon me? But I did not have that sort of friend – certainly not Hettie – and if I had any enemies surely they would not be so gentle in their revenge. Looking at my visitor, though, it was clear that she was troubled and I had no difficulty at all in keeping a straight face. She swallowed and clutched the handle of her handbag.
‘I see.’ I picked up my cup. ‘But how can I help you?’
‘It may be that you cannot,’ she said, ‘but I should like you to find out why.’
‘Do you want me to ask her?’ I enquired in mild surprise. It seemed an odd request to make of a stranger.
‘Good heavens no,’ she replied hastily. ‘I would like you to investigate.’ Martha must have observed my sceptical expression and misinterpreted it, because she added, ‘Unless you are too busy.’
You are much too busy, Ruby insisted.
You most certainly are, Inspector Hefty agreed for he was still languishing in one of my many unfinished manuscripts.
‘It is not that,’ I said, dragging my thoughts back to the matter in hand. ‘I can find the time but…’ I hesitated. ‘You do know that I am not a detective?’
Martha flushed slightly.
‘Well of course.’
‘It is just,’ I put in hastily before she took too much offence, ‘that I have had some highly intelligent readers confuse me with my heroine.’
They were actually people with half a brain in search of a companion and I was surprised that they could read, but I was trying something that Miss Kidd, my governess, had despaired of teaching me – being tactful.
Martha smiled wryly.
‘I have not escaped from the Dewbury Hall asylum.’
‘I know that you have not.’
I stirred my coffee.
If this were one of my Hefty stories, I would have made some clever observation but, anxious that my visitor was not under any delusions about my deductive powers, I explained, ‘The director is a relative of mine and he would have told me if anyone had absconded.’
Martha nodded.
‘I did consider employing a private detective,’ she told me, that being the first resort of anyone who has ever fallen out with a friend. ‘But one hears such dreadful stories of how unscrupulous they can be.’
‘One certainly does,’ I concurred, Hettie having had distressing experiences at the hands of the Barfolemew Pentigin Agency.
‘And how would I explain their bills to Arthur, my husband?’
‘Arthur and Martha,’ I mused though, as Miss Kidd had instructed me when I was a child and Agnust had reiterated only last week, one should never comment upon people’s names. They might think that you are mocking them and the chances are that they would be right.
‘Quite so,’ Martha agreed with no sign of resentment. ‘The similarity of our names struck me as humorous before I was married. There has been precious little to amuse me since.’
Do not ask for details, Ruby advised, or she will never leave.
The postcard boy was strolling to his patch in front of the great flint and mortar arch that had guarded the monastery gates. Once there he would sit on the low ruins of the wall, contorting his legs in grotesque imitation of a crippled child.
‘So your husband does not know about your friend?’
‘It would only confirm his belief that the most intelligent of women are scatter-brained.’
‘He is not alone in that opinion,’ I commented and Martha lowered her head.
‘Alone describes how I feel quite perfectly.’
‘Do you have any children?’
Martha exhaled heavily.
‘Four boys,’ she said, ‘all stillborn.’ She pinched the bridge of her nose. ‘Dolores was the only person I could turn to after the last one. Arthur had lost interest in my grief by then.’
Martha blew her lips out.
So now she has latched onto you, Ruby said nastily but possibly accurately, and I was about to disengage myself from my visitor as gently as possible when Ruby added, Get rid of her.
If there was one thing Ruby, Agnust and I had in common it was a dislike of being told what to do and, to borrow a phrase from Friendless, I was dripped on dripping if I was going to be bossed about by my own creation.
‘I will do whatever I can,’ I promised though I had not the slightest idea what that might be.
Do not worry about me, Ruby said lemon tartly. I can smell burning.
Martha Ryan squeezed my hand.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You and Hettie are the first people I have met in a long time who I feel I can trust.’ She unclipped her bag yet again – a tribute to British craftsmanship that the catch had not broken. ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’
‘Not at all,’ I said, though I disliked the acridness of cigarettes and the way it seeped into my clothes and furnishings, but at least she had the courtesy to ask. Most people assume that nothing would give one greater pleasure than to bathe in their fumes.
I got back to my feet, went to my desk to open a lower drawer and brought out a Limoges ashtray. It was a present from a friend for her to use on visits. The picture was of a lady and a shepherd. Only a town dweller could imagine that the brutes who guard sheep are romantic figures.
‘Let us start with some details,’ I suggested, if only to settle her down. ‘Where do you live, Martha?’
‘Cranberry House,’ she told me, reaching into her bag. ‘Orchard Square.’
‘That is a nice area.’
And expensive, Ruby remarked. You should charge her a fee for our time.
Martha produced a silver box of vestas but, instead of a matching cigarette case, followed it with a red rectangular box, hinging open a lid inscribed LITTLE QUEEN and Perfumed cigarettes. The cigarette itself was encircled in a gold band on one end and the name was printed, also in gold, along the side. It was so elegant that I was almost tempted to cadge one just so that I could hold it.
‘What is your friend’s name?’ I asked as she slotted her cigarette into a silver holder, cast in the shape of a snake with a gaping mouth.
‘Mrs Dolores Poynder,’ she told me. ‘Her husband is a doctor.’
‘Dr Edward Poynder?’ I knew of him, though I had never required his services.
Yet, Ruby chipped in.
‘Yes.’ Martha gripped the holder between her straight white teeth.
Actually teeth are never white, Ruby corrected me, they are light yellow at best because their dentine shows through the enamel.
Yes but…
Also, she spoke over me, they cannot be straight. They follow the arcs of the jaws.
I knew that she was correct, but my visitor had good teeth and curved light yellow did not do them justice.
Martha struck a vesta, dipped her head towards the flame, and shook the match out. ‘He has a consulting room in their house and gives two days a week at the nursing home and another in the infirmary.’ She snapped the match deftly. ‘Oh and, just to ensure his place in the heaven he repudiates, he does good works amongst the slum poor.’
Dr Poynder had an even greater claim to sainthood than that, I recalled.
‘That poor little boy,’ I said automatically.
‘Yes,’ Martha said. ‘Edward was quite the man of the hour.’
I watched as she sucked the smoke deep inside her. Had there been a tinge of irony in her tone? I could not imagine why there would be.
The papers had been full of the events for weeks. The vultures had even swooped on Montford from the heights of Fleet Street, for the story had everything of which they could wish to pick the bones – the murder of a child, a handsome hero, an innocent man in custody and the same handsome hero to the rescue.
Dr Edward Poynder had just finished seeing a patient in his house when he heard Sheba, his English Setter, barking wildly and then squeal as if in pain. Hurrying out into the back garden, Poynder was horrified to see his pet dead on the terrace, blood pouring from a slashed throat.
In the corner of his eye he glimpsed the figure of a man in a long black cloak and fedora making his way from the shrubbery through the side gate. Poynder gave chase and was just in time to see the man fleeing around the corner down Gainsborough Gardens. He would have followed, but found himself presented with an even more ghastly sight, a small boy staggering in the road, bleeding heavily from chest and neck wounds. As the doctor ran to help, the boy collapsed and, try as Poynder might, he could do little to staunch the haemorrhages.
At that moment Jacob Kaufman, a salt-block seller, arrived on his cart. He was clearly distraught and despite the doctor’s attempts to restrain him, cradled the child in his arms as the boy expired.
Kaufman identified the victim as Mungo Peers, the ten-year-old son of a local grocer who was prosperous enough not to put him to work. Mungo was a popular child. Good natured and something of a chatterbox, he would often sit outside his father’s shop striking up conversations with whoever passed by. Kaufman had the reputation of being a solitary, sometimes surly, man but even he was taken with the boy. The two struck up a friendship and Mungo began to take rides on the cart, running to the tradesmen’s entrances of private houses with orders wrapped in brown paper parcels.
Mungo made friends with kitchen maids who often gave him slices of bread and butter or cake. While the boy dallied, Kaufman would continue on his round, stopping at every house to deliver regular orders or check if any were required so it was easy for Mungo to rejoin him. On this occasion, the child not having caught up, Kaufman had circled around in search of his young friend only to find him on the brink of death.
Poynder summoned Montford police station on the telephone. Sergeant Gorbals was the first to arrive with two constables. Having a clinic booked at the Newbury Nursing Home, Poynder gave a brief statement, then returned home to wash himself and change his clothes. After instructing his man Wormwood to bury Sheba in the garden he set off for work.
It was PC Canning who, seeing how Kaufman was covered in blood, searched his cart. There were bloodstains on the block of salt and a machete-like knife hidden under a sheet of tarpaulin. The handle of that knife was also covered in blood. Had Kaufman not panicked, he could have explained that he used the knife to cut the salt and was in the habit of covering it over to prevent its theft when his back was turned, and that he must have got blood on it when he put it away after comforting Mungo. But the salt seller had been in trouble with the police before. A maid had accused him of lewd behaviour and he had been treated roughly until the other servants had vouched for him. He panicked and claimed, foolishly, that he had gashed himself but, on being unable to show any cuts, was arrested and charged with murder.
When Dr Poynder arrived at Montford police station to make a statement he was told that Jacob Kaufman had confessed to murdering Mungo Peers and killing Sheba and was asked to take a look at the guilty man who had tripped down the flight of stone steps to the cells. Kaufman, it was explained, had fallen out with Dr Poynder’s cook and had killed the dog in retaliation for her cancelling their regular order and, his bloodlust up, had turned on the child who, being fond of Sheba, had tried to intervene.
To be fair to the Montford Chronical it tried to give a balanced view of events, but few other newspapers made any attempt to do anything other than sensationalise an already sensational story. As for Kaufman, The Englishman’s Weekly reminded readers, it was well known that Jews ritually sacrificed gentile children.
Poynder was unconvinced by these stories and by the sergeant’s account of how Kaufman received his injuries and so, when the salt-block seller retracted his confession, the doctor appeared at the inquest with his version of events. The man he had seen fleeing, he insisted, bore no resemblance to Kaufman; the weapon used was a carving knife Poynder had seen the murderer cast away; and the failure of the police to follow up on his evidence had allowed the guilty man to make his escape.
The accused man was released without trial, to a thunderous article in the Englishman’s Weekly accusing the police of allowing their antisemitism to cloud their judgement, but Kaufman found himself a pariah. People were sceptical about the nature of his friendship with Mungo and maids became nervous of dealing with him.
Mud sticks, Ruby commented, but blood stains and it can never be washed away.