Peter Lovesey - A Case of Spirits

‘I think he was trying to evade me at the time, sir.’

Strathmore nodded. ‘I think each one of us must admit to a measure of blame for the things that happened that evening, Sergeant. Where was I? Ah yes, by the time Captain Nye came up from the cellar we were ready to resume the experiment, so the poor fellow was sent straight down again to switch the electricity on while we resumed our seats in the library.’

‘Do you happen to remember who was the last person to leave the study?’ asked Cribb,

‘It must have been Probert. I remember him drawing the curtain.’

‘And you returned to the galvanometer?’

‘I did. It was twenty minutes to eleven and we had a reading of 202. The next thing I recall is the door-handle turning and you arriving in the room. It gave us quite a shock, Sergeant, I can tell you.’

‘But not so big a shock as Mr Brand was getting, eh?’ said Cribb a little coarsely. ‘Well, sir, you’ve been very helpful. I think you’ve covered all the matters I was wanting to ask about.’

‘Possibly it helps that we are both investigators in our different ways, Sergeant,’ said Strathmore, standing up. ‘Without seeming to boast, I think I know what you peelers require from a witness. Might I inquire whether you have come to a conclusion yet about Brand’s death?’

‘I think I’m closer to it now than I was, sir. Have you formed any opinion about it yourself, by any chance?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Strathmore. ‘I am quite certain how it happened, but I should not wish to prejudice your investigation. When you have made up your mind, you must let me know, and I shall tell you whether we have both arrived at the same conclusion.’

Pursuing Miss Probert had a beneficial effect on Thackeray. Trailing a suspect was a duty he had performed more times than he cared to remember, but suspects with trim figures and elegant deportment were rare. Trailing was not quite the word to describe his sprightly step along Hill Street. He moved like a man twenty years his junior.

The difficulty was in convincing himself that she was a suspect at all. A young woman who devoted so much of her time to distributing food to the impoverished was not his notion of a murderess, however incriminating Cribb might regard the presence of a brush and comb in her basket. A dagger or a tin of weed-killer Thackeray was ready to be impressed by, but a brush and comb? He grinned to himself as he threaded his way through the shoppers of Richmond.

By crossing the street he gave himself a longer view of the pavement Alice Probert travelled along. An additional advantage of this parallel route was that she was unlikely to suspect his presence. People always supposed that if anyone chose to follow them they would automatically use the same side of the street.

He spotted her at once, waiting to cross at the junction with Red Lion Street. A young constable on traffic duty waved two four-wheelers past before halting a cart to allow her to cross. She nodded her thanks and stepped forward. She would be easy to keep in sight, with that bar of white on the trimming of her hat. She was not paying the smallest attention to Thackeray’s side of the street, but he went through the motions of making sure there were other pedestrians between himself and his quarry and occasionally altering his stride to take advantage of the cover of a passing vehicle.

Across Red Lion Street she stopped to exchange words with an older woman in a grey coat who had obviously been shopping, for an elderly manservant weighed down with parcels had stopped at the same time and stood patiently some yards behind her. It occurred to Thackeray that Alice must be well known in Richmond, at least among the well-to-do. Whatever felonies she intended with her brush and comb she was going to find it difficult to avoid being recognised. He stopped beside a tobacconist’s and waited, like the man with the parcels, for the end of the conversation.

Several minutes later, she took her leave of the woman in grey and moved on towards the point where Hill Street curved to the right and became George Street. To the left was Richmond Green, to the right the Parish Church, and ahead, beyond the Quadrant, the railway station. She chose none of these directions. Instead, she opened the door of a shop on the right and went inside. Thackeray stepped briskly ahead and drew level with the shop. It was a milliner’s. He thought of the brush and comb and smiled broadly. Cribb has not included a hat-shop in his calculations.

The window of the shop was arranged on the principle that the more goods one displayed, the greater was the chance of engaging the attention of a customer. From Thackeray’s side of the street the hats in their rows looked not too different from the arrangement of apples in the greengrocer’s next door.

He prepared to wait again. Five minutes passed by the clock over the jeweller’s midway along George Street. He was rather charmed by this little interlude in Alice Probert’s charitable excursion. Much as he admired young women with social consciences, he liked to be assured that they occasionally slipped into a milliner’s and tried on hats.

After another five minutes cold feet were beginning to occupy him more than saintly women. Nobody had gone into the shop since Alice, and only one customer, dressed in brown, had emerged. The stream of traffic and pedestrians coursed past him, emphasising how inactive he was. Then the disquieting thought came to him that there might be another entrance at the back of the shop, with access from Red Lion Street. He crossed the street in the direction of the greengrocer’s and turned and walked past the milliner’s, with the merest glance through the window. To his mortification there was nobody inside but a shop-assistant arranging a bonnet on a stand.

He turned about and pushed open the door. The assistant was a girl of thirteen or so. Her eyes opened wide at the arrival of an unaccompanied man in the shop. ‘May I help you, sir?’ she said, more as an expression of surprise than a promise of assistance.

‘I hope so. I was looking for my-er-niece. I thought she came in here to try on a hat a few minutes ago.’

‘You must be mistaken, sir. We haven’t had a customer in here for half an hour.’

Half an hour? It had not been that long. ‘I’m sure she came in,’ Thackeray insisted. ‘There ain’t a back door to the shop, is there?’

‘No, sir. Perhaps if you could tell me how madam was dressed. .’

‘Dark green coat,’ said Thackeray. He was good at descriptions. ‘Hat the same colour, trimmed with white.

And she was carrying a basket of oranges.’

‘Oh!’ said the girl, as if the clouds had rolled away. ‘Wait a moment.’ She crossed to a chest of drawers and took out a large purple hat. ‘Was madam’s hat in this style, but green in colour?’

‘That’s the one!’ said Thackeray.

‘She got it here last week,’ said the girl. ‘It matched her coat beautifully. But she came in fifteen minutes ago to visit Miss Barkway, the manageress. She comes almost every day. She is not a customer, sir. She is a personal friend of Miss Barkway. You are related to her, sir?’

‘I’m her Uncle Edward,’ said Thackeray at once. ‘Where is she now? Through there?’ He pointed to a door he had noticed behind a full-length mirror.

‘That leads upstairs to Miss Barkway’s rooms,’ said the girl in a whisper. ‘The lady always goes straight upstairs and comes down after five minutes in different clothes. I really don’t know why. Perhaps you do. She left the shop a few minutes before you came in. Didn’t you notice her? But of course you wouldn’t if you expected to see her in the green hat. She was wearing brown. And she always covers her face with a veil.’