Maxim Jakubowski - The Best British Mysteries III

‘So you see,’ said Esther, relaxing momentarily, ‘there’s more than one suspect. And blackmailers don’t normally have just one iron in the fire. There could have been people all over London whom Isabella knew dangerous things about.’

‘What are you saying? That she was a madam? A brothel keeper? If she was, the police would have known.’

‘I’m sure they would. Very interested in brothels, the police. Either they want to use them or to shut them down.’

‘Wash your mouth out, girl. Police wouldn’t.’

‘Police are men, just like soldiers and sailors. But I’m not saying she was a brothel keeper. She was a blackmailer. How she got her secrets doesn’t concern you. I do know that my mistress was going to go to see her, to offer her a big payment to make an end of it.’

‘Are you accusing her of murder?’

‘I’m saying that a police force that knew what it was doing would have made her a suspect. But there’s this difficulty about blackmailers: they’re not looking for a quick fortune. They’re looking for an income.’

‘You’re right there, for once, girl.’

‘A steady drip of money’s what they find useful. And that suits their sense of power, too. They love nothing so much as having someone in their power, gradually turning the screw. In any case, there was nothing that Mrs Critchley could hand over to my mistress and say: ‘There’s an end of it.’ She didn’t have any thing. What she had was knowledge. In her brain. And dying with her.’

She was interrupted by a great roar from her father.

‘Doctor! Get a doctor!’

Esther remained as composed as a steel girder.

‘A doctor, Dad? Not for a spot of indigestion, surely.’

‘This isn’t indi-’ He sat forward in his seat, clutching his stomach.

‘Have you realised that at last?’ said Esther. ‘No, it isn’t indigestion. I’ll tell you what it is, Dad. It’s hyoscine, in your beer. You’ve been having small quantities for quite a while now. It all mounts up. I found out about it by reading all the stuff in the newspapers about the trial of Mr Critchley. They went mad about poisons, and I didn’t think I should use the same thing. So here I am, you see, one more suspect: I could have read up about poison months ago. I could have decided to do my mistress a service and kill her tormentor for her.’

Again the groan, again the heaving sounds from the stomach, again the plea: ‘A doctor!’

‘Oh no, Dad,’ said Esther, shaking her head. ‘I’m going out, but not to fetch a doctor. I’m walking out of this room, locking the door, and I’m going to put this place behind me. See that bag behind the sofa? That contains everything I want to keep from my old life. Not much, is it?’

An expletive came from the floor, as Septimus slid down ungracefully from his chair. Esther stood up.

‘I’m going to go now and fetch Mum from Bessy Rowlands’. I’m going to take her up to the West End, show her the sights, treat her to a meal at Lyons. I’ll tell her I left your meal ready. And while we’re eating I’ll tell her I’m going to live with my mistress. And that’s true, too. We’re starting a new life in Manchester. That’s one of the centres of the suffragette movement. So today is an end for you, and an end for me here. I’ll be better off with my mistress.’ She knelt down and hissed into his ear: ‘That’s what she is, Dad. My mistress. My lover.’ There was an outraged grunt, and some slurred word that sounded like ‘impossible’. She shook her head. ‘Oh no, it’s not impossible, Dad. That’s what Mrs Critchley held over her – and over some other prominent women. They’d been lovers years before. Oh, there should have been a lot of suspects in the Isabella Critchley murder case, Dad. The police picked on the one nearest to hand, and you’ve just hanged him.’

Again the strangled syllables, words that sounded like ‘right man’.

She knelt down and whispered straight into his protuberant ear.

‘Oh no, you didn’t hang the right man, Dad. I killed her myself. Not because I was involved with her husband. Men don’t attract me. Not as a service to my mistress, though I’m fond of her, and was glad to be of help. I killed her because I’m your daughter. There is something in me that wants to kill, and gets pleasure from killing when the time comes. It’s in the blood, Dad. I have an appetite for killing. I get it from you.’

When the young French doctor returned, Albert Potter thought he looked agitated. Noticing the Englishman’s stare, he begged his guest to excuse his state of mind.

‘You will have to forgive me, Monsieur Potter. I was attending to a patient. He gets a little…agitated when the wind howls in the trees. He thinks it is the Devil come to take him away. I have given him a sedative, and he will sleep now.’

Dr Gaston was a young man in his twenties – too young, Albert Potter thought, to be in charge of even a French lunatic asylum. But then who, with a reputation already earned, or a family to keep, would be prepared to hide himself away in this crumbling mausoleum of a place in the middle of nowhere? The good doctor, on the other hand, seemed to find his charges fascinating, and had explained he was writing a thesis on the causes of neurasthenia and dementia praecox.

‘Now, please, tell me about this man you are seeking.’

Uneasy at the predatory glitter in the doctor’s eyes, Potter tried to pull together in his mind all the events of the last few days. His own actions of the last few hours had not been all that rational, and he did not wish to seem entirely mad. After all, he was supposed to have been making sense of Louis Le Prince’s actions. Potter realised at that very moment that, though he had traced the man’s last journey meticulously, he had not sufficiently researched his habits and peculiarities. Nor his extraordinary invention, and the possible enemies it had created.

His mind drifted back to the meeting that had brought him to this remote asylum on the edge of a village that didn’t even merit a stop on the main steam-train line between Dijon and Paris…

Albert Potter had been recommended to Mrs Le Prince as a young man of good character, forceful manner, and dogged determination who would find her husband if he was to be found. But more important to Potter than all those encomiums was the undisclosed reason for his proposed services – the state of his pocket. He was in dire need of funds. His remuneration as a clerk at the Colonial Office was satisfactory for a single man such as he was at present. But Albert had other ambitions, and they chiefly concerned the beautiful and well-connected Rosalind Wells.

Of course, he was no fool. He knew he was short and ungainly, with a head too big for his body. Indeed he had winced when once he had accidentally overheard Rosalind referring to him, to one of her friends, as ‘that tadpole of a man’. But his ego was as large as his body was small, and when he set his mind to something, he usually got what he wanted. And Rosalind Wells was what he wanted.

So now he found himself in need of funds, and when someone told him of Mrs Le Prince and her search for her missing husband, he had travelled immediately up to Leeds. Private investigation had always piqued his curiosity, and the opportunity for travel this matter afforded was alluring. Besides, Rosalind Wells was in Leeds talking to trade-union organisers for the Fabian Society. Later, he would surprise her with his presence, but first he had to address the matter in hand.

‘You say your husband simply disappeared while on the Dijon-to-Paris train, Madame Le Prince?’

‘I am as English as you are, Mr Potter, so it’s Mrs Le Prince, please. Or indeed, Elizabeth, if you prefer.’