Soon after they arrived home, Max Gillan, a senior reporter with the Bayswater Chronicle, arrived with a sparkle of anticipation in his eyes. Frances and he had come to an agreement some while before that she would grant him exclusive interviews on the condition that he promised not to distort the truth, and he in return would supply her with any information he had gleaned about cases in which she was interested.
‘Is it true what everyone is saying?’ he asked eagerly. ‘Are you taking up your detective work again?’
Frances spoke carefully. ‘Not precisely. I have been undertaking searches for lost relatives and pets, and helping clients construct their family trees, but I am not engaging in criminal work. I was asked to look into the disappearance of Mr Dobree, which could have occurred for any wholly innocent reason, and until the next hearing we will not know the answer.’
‘Would you be able to tell our readers your opinion on the matter?’ he asked with what he must have hoped was a winning smile.
Frances would not be won over. ‘I would never presume to anticipate the verdict of a coroner’s jury, especially since there is more evidence to be presented.’
‘But it is all over Bayswater that you were there when the body was discovered! Did you see it?’
‘Thankfully no, since I was told that it had been much damaged by the action of rats.’
His pencil moved rapidly over the pages of his notebook, scattering the impenetrable lines, loops and dots of shorthand. ‘Eaten? Oh, please say it was eaten.’
‘I can’t comment in any detail. The hands and face had been attacked, which made identifying the body difficult. If you want something new to print, then I can give you all the circumstances of the finding of the body.’
‘I’ll have to be content with that for now,’ he conceded.
Frances supplied the story, hoping that an account of the unusual disappearance of Lancelot Dobree would stimulate the memory of any witnesses who had seen him on the fatal night.
‘Will you be at the adjourned inquest?’ Gillan asked.
‘I will, but as an observer only.’
‘So you do think Dobree was murdered?’
‘I can’t answer that question. But should the jury come to that conclusion it will mark the end of any interest I have in the case.’
Gillan smiled. ‘I know you, Miss Doughty, and if it is a case of murder I think you won’t be able to resist looking into it.’
Frances was spared making a reply by a loud knocking on the front door. She looked outside and saw a group of press-men gathered on the paved approach and steps. ‘I have said all I am going to say to the press, and if you could do me a very great favour, Mr Gillan, on your way out could you tell the gentlemen to disperse before their presence constitutes a nuisance and I have to summon the police, or, worse still, Sarah.’
He grinned. ‘Right you are!’
Frances had no more news of the Dobree case on the following day, and expected none, but it remained prominent in her thoughts. Mr Gillan had been right about one thing, the puzzle continued to intrigue her.
There were two clients to see in the morning. Frances interviewed a lady whose son had been truanting from school. The usual chastisements had failed to have any effect, and she wanted him followed to find out what so diverted his attention from his studies. It was a case made for Tom Smith and his ‘men’ and Frances prepared a note with the information they required.
A single young lady arrived with a letter she had discovered that had been placed on a path where she walked, and was clearly intended for her. The writer professed to be a young man of good character and paid her compliments in refined language to which no one could have objected. He wished to meet her with the object of making her better acquaintance, and suggested a time and place. The lady had very prudently declined to make the assignation, but appealed to Frances to discover the identity of the sender. Frances decided to turn that case over to Sarah. It was not certain whether the writer had any criminal intent, but it was as well to test him out.
Her afternoon was devoted to work on behalf of a Bayswater businessman, Mr Cork, who had asked her to draw up his family tree. Mr Cork, a manufacturer of cravats and cummerbunds, was in a state of permanent rivalry with his former partner, Mr Wren, whose business was of a similar kind, and the two alternated between being bitter enemies and close friends. Both were well known to Frances and it had once been necessary for Sarah to restore calm between them through the liberal application of alcoholic beverages. It had been Mr Cork’s hope that she would discover that the family legend that he was descended from nobility would turn out to be true, in which case he would never permit Mr Wren to forget it, but Frances was going to have to disappoint him. Not only were his great-grandfathers all fishmongers, but it also transpired that he and Mr Wren were distant cousins. How that would affect their tempestuous relationship she could not guess.
Sarah was due to go out that evening in the company of Professor Pounder, and Frances had expected to spend some quiet time by the fireside with a little reading and cold pie and cheese. Having just enjoyed a pot of tea, she was choosing a book to read and trying to convince herself that a novel would be the best thing to calm her busy mind, when the volume that really appealed to her was the Bayswater Street Directory. Sarah was doing some mending but appeared to be unusually unsettled as if her fingers, usually so strong and nimble, had suddenly lost their ability to direct a needle.
‘Is there something troubling you?’ asked Frances.
‘Well, it shouldn’t,’ said Sarah. ‘I mean, it’s just a fish supper.’
‘That sounds very enjoyable.’
‘It will be.’ Sarah didn’t look convinced. After more fidgeting with the sewing, she suddenly gave up and threw it down in her lap. ‘You could come with if you like.’
Frances was surprised. ‘Would that be acceptable to Professor Pounder?’
‘I don’t see why not.’
‘But if it’s just the two of you —’
‘Well that’s it, isn’t it? It’s not just the two of us, we’re having supper with the family. So there.’
It took a moment or two for Frances to understand the import of this information. ‘You mean that you are introducing Professor Pounder to your family?’
‘In a manner of speaking. He hasn’t met them before and they want to meet him.’
‘Does this mean —’
‘No,’ Sarah cut her off. ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’
‘But you are worried they might not like him, or he might not like them?’
‘Anything’s possible. I just don’t want it to end in a fight.’
‘Do you think it might?’
Sarah shrugged.
‘But isn’t one of your brothers Jeb Smith, the Wapping Walloper? So there is a mutual interest in the art of pugilism. That is a good start. Your parents will surely think well of the Professor and his successful business; and he has very good manners.’
‘That’s as maybe, but Ma is old fashioned and don’t like Irish.’
‘I didn’t know he was Irish. But he is an excellent man and I know he will win her over.’
Sarah looked as though she was trying to convince herself. ‘Would you come with? I know they’d like to meet you.’
Frances laid her book aside. ‘And I would very much like to meet them.’
Sarah’s relief was all too obvious. Soon afterwards, Professor Pounder, clutching a bunch of flowers and a box of sweetmeats, called to say their cab was ready. He said nothing when told that Frances would be accompanying them, but Frances thought that he too was relieved, though she could not imagine how she might be of any use if a fight broke out. Young Tom appeared, wearing his best suit of clothes, his face scrubbed to a shine, and they departed, Sarah carrying a parcel containing two plum cakes she had made earlier.
As they left the wooden paving of Bayswater, which reduced the sound of their carriage to a dull rumble like a looming thunderstorm, they passed through the teeming heart of London, where the clatter and crunch of wheels and hooves was almost enough to drown the cries of drivers trying to work through what looked like a dangerously random melee. Their journey took them through the heart of what Frances thought a mighty city should be, the shopping emporiums, the homes of the ancient guilds, the great banks, the offices of the press and palaces of law and government. Tom, the only person not regarding the visit with nervous apprehension, looked out of the window at the fine buildings as if counting up the money of those who worked there.
Heading past the street markets and the Tower into the commercial east end, they reached the part of London dominated by the docks, a reminder that London was and had been since ancient times, a seaport. Warehouses, factories and the homes of labouring families were clustered close together, dwarfed by a forest of cranes. Buildings wallowed like sinking ships in the stench of industry, which mingled the odours of smelting, metal casting and sugar refining with the dark smoke that boiled from blackened chimneys.
Sarah rarely talked about her family, and she had never revealed exactly how she and Tom were related, occasionally referring to him vaguely as a cousin, although Frances suspected that the connection was rather closer. Now, however, Sarah, perhaps trying to still her nervousness by talking, began to tell some of her history. Her father, she said, had worked in the London docks since he was twelve. Now aged sixty, his legs were weak and he was only able to do light labouring. Her mother had married at sixteen, and brought up a family of eight boys and two girls in a small apartment on the Ratcliffe Highway. It was a tribute to her hard work and devotion that she had only lost one child, a daughter who had died from scarlet fever. Sarah’s eight brothers had initially been destined for dock work like their father, and four of them still toiled there, but family fortunes had taken a better turn when Jeb had discovered a more lucrative metier in the boxing ring, Henry and Sam had found employment at Charles Jamrach’s Animal Emporium, which dealt in exotic birds, beasts and curiosities, and Jack became apprenticed to a tailor. Sarah’s parents and the four sons who were still unmarried now occupied a three-room apartment above a draper’s shop.
As they drove down the busy highway, Sarah, who liked a bloodcurdling tale as much as anybody, told the story of the horrible murders of 1811 and the time when Mr Jamrach had saved a young boy from the jaws of an escaped tiger. Far more fearsome in her estimation was the prospect of the promised gathering and as the cab drew up in front of the draper’s, Professor Pounder squeezed her shoulder with a surprisingly gentle hand.
Mrs Smith, who came down the stairs to greet them, was a small wiry woman with grey hair and strong hands, knotted and darkened by hard work like the branches of an ancient tree. She led them up to the parlour and introduced her husband, a broad shouldered but mild-looking man, with a well-used pipe and a penny whistle sticking out of his waistcoat pocket. A large fire was blazing in the grate and the room burned hot and smoky. Salutations and gifts were exchanged and Mrs Smith, after a cautious look at Professor Pounder who towered over her, accepted the flowers and sweets and seemed much taken by them.
All of Sarah’s brothers were there, with four wives, Jeb’s intended and several children, although there was not room for everyone in the parlour, and the three younger brothers, two wives and all the children had had to crowd into an adjoining room, and be brought out in twos and threes at intervals to be introduced to the visitors.
The scrubbed table was hardly large enough to do more than lay out platters of food, and there were so many chairs in the room, many of which must have been borrowed from neighbours, that once seated it was almost impossible to move without disturbing several people. The food was plain, fried fish, boiled potatoes in butter, white sauce, and pickles, with foaming jugs of beer. The conversation tended to family matters, Jeb’s recent success in the ring and forthcoming wedding, the wild animals that Henry and Sam had, at considerable risk both to themselves and the population at large, recently transported to a menagerie, and Jack’s progress in the art of gentleman’s suiting. The four dockworkers seemed not to resent their brothers’ more elevated employments but looked on with cheerful pride. All were dressed as if for a Sunday and the young men, while respecting their father, deferred to their mother in everything. The meal was rounded off with cake, sweets and tea, and then someone sent out for more beer.
Frances was questioned about her work, since all were well aware of the dangers she had faced and the criminals she had brought to justice. She was regaled with stories of the old hanging dock where pirates had met their end, and asked for her opinion on whether John Williams, the man suspected of the notorious murders in 1811, had been guilty of the crimes. Frances promised she would look into it. The conversation then turned to the Professor’s boxing academy, and by degrees and as more beer was fetched and consumed, he was invited to demonstrate his strength by lifting Jeb Smith using one arm, something he accomplished with ease. Further demonstrations followed, such as the space available would allow, and then Mr Smith treated everyone to a tune on the penny whistle, after which someone sent out for more beer. Frances had never been partial to beer, and was not sure afterwards how she had managed to consume so much of it, but it was very refreshing.
It was time to leave, and as the Professor went to find a cab, Mr Smith tapped Sarah on the arm and said, ‘He’ll do.’