Philip Gooden - The Durham Deception

‘But now the rumours have started again.’

‘So it seems.’

‘This Major Marmont is really a magician? I could hardly believe it when Mr Mackenzie said so.’

‘Oh yes. Mr Mackenzie has a soft spot for magicians. He — that is, Mr Mackenzie — used to do conjuring tricks for his children at Christmas.’

‘I did not even know that the Mackenzies had children,’ said Tom, forgetting the magic tricks and remembering instead the tall and bony Mrs Mackenzie.

‘Well, Mr Ansell, we have an office life and a home life, you know. Some of us like to keep them separate.’

This unexpected remark naturally made Tom speculate about Mr Ashley’s home life, something he’d never done before. It occurred to him he did not even know Mr Ashley’s first name. Now was not the moment to ask. Instead he thanked the senior clerk.

When Tom got home that evening he found Helen in a distracted, almost distressed state. He’d been looking forward to telling her about the Lucknow Dagger and planning for their journey to Durham. But first she had something to show him. It was an item from a two-day-old copy of The Register. Helen had been about to put aside the newspaper so that Hetty could use it for lining shelves when a heading caught her eye. The heading was Another Waterloo Suicide? As Tom read the news item, he felt himself grow cold.

A body recovered yesterday from the Thames has been identified by the authorities as that of Mr Ernest Smight of 67 Tullis Street near the British Museum. It is believed that Mr Smight fell or jumped to his death from Waterloo Bridge. The toll-keeper, Mr Lind, recalls a person of Mr Smight’s description crossing the bridge from the north bank on Monday evening at around 10 o’clock. Mr Lind says, ‘The gentleman was well dressed for a mild summer evening. I particularly remarked upon his thick clothing. He also neglected to take the change of five pennies from the sixpence which he tendered. Five whole pennies! I had to call him back to my booth and he did not thank me for it. I am certain this was the individual later recovered from the river.’

Mr Smight, believed to be in his early sixties, was a well-known medium who had practised his trade for many years in the purlieus of Tottenham Court Road. According to the authorities his establishment in Tullis Street had recently been visited by members of the police force who were acting on information received. His sister Miss Ethel Smight, who used to assist Mr Smight in his sittings, said that her brother was deeply upset by the intrusion of the police into affairs that were confidential and ‘of a delicate nature’. She went so far as to talk of ‘persecution’. Although she was too overwrought to speculate as to why her brother might have taken his own life, if that is what has occurred, we understood that the unfortunate demise of this individual may be connected with the possibility of a forthcoming legal action. A coroner’s jury will shortly pronounce on the death of Mr Ernest Smight.

‘Oh God,’ said Tom.

‘Yes,’ said Helen. ‘I have had the whole day to think this over. I’ve read the story again and again. I couldn’t help thinking that the medium warned about the danger to us, the danger near water, and now he is drowned.’

‘I am sorry for it,’ said Tom, though he wasn’t sure whether he was saying sorry to Helen or expressing regret about the whole Smight business. One advantage, the only one, was that there could now be no court case and so no need for witnesses.

‘Why was he dressed in those thick clothes?’ said Helen, breaking into his thoughts.

‘I don’t know. Probably because he thought they’d drag him down more quickly.’

‘Ugh. Horrid thought. That’s if it was a suicide.’

‘What else can it have been? It would be hard to fall off Waterloo Bridge by accident. Besides, we know some of the circumstances that led up to it.’

‘We do know the circumstances, but I can’t help feeling we have a hand in this, somehow.’

‘We didn’t unmask Mr Smight, Helen. That policeman, Seldon, did it. Smight was an impostor.’

‘An impostor who had a glimpse of your late father.’

Tom had forgotten this or rather had done his best to forget it. Now he said, ‘I’m sure the medium got the information from somewhere. He no more saw my father than I did.’

‘You weren’t looking in the right direction.’

It wasn’t worth arguing about. Helen now seemed inclined to give the medium the benefit of the doubt even while Tom’s own doubts had hardened. But the news story about the drowning of Ernest Smight wasn’t the only thing to unsettle Helen. She told Tom how Hetty had been at the shops that afternoon and had discovered that someone had been asking questions about them.

‘About us?’

‘You know Hetty always goes to Covins for the vegetables? Well, it appears that someone was in the shop earlier today asking about the neighbourhood, saying how it was coming up in the world and so on, and how he’d heard that lawyers and such people were moving out to Kentish Town. He wanted to know whether it would be a good place to start a business or open a shop.’

‘Sounds innocent enough,’ said Tom.

‘Wait a moment. According to Hetty, Mr Covins said that if the fellow asking the questions was a would-be shopkeeper then he was a Chinaman. Mr Covins was a Chinaman, that is.’

‘I still don’t see what it’s got to with us.’

‘He mentioned Abercrombie Road by name, he talked about lawyers and notaries coming from the City.’

‘Coincidence,’ said Tom.

‘And that is not all,’ said Helen more urgently as Tom was dismissing her words. ‘There was a man standing on the other side of the street this afternoon. I watched him from the upstairs window for a good ten minutes. Loitering, I would have said, and casting his eyes across the houses on this side.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘Small and slight. Dressed in labouring clothes. But when I opened the front door to go and have a word with him he’d gone.’

‘It’s probably nothing,’ said Tom. But nevertheless he felt uneasy. The mysterious figure might have been a ‘crow’, as they were known, someone deputed to scout a district for potential break-ins. He reminded himself to make certain that all the doors and windows were well fastened that night. On the other hand, the whole thing might be a case of Helen letting her imagination loose. She made up stories, after all, and might see patterns and plots where someone else — Tom, for example — could see nothing at all. But he didn’t say this. Instead he changed the subject.

He told Helen about his instructions from David Mackenzie and outlined what he knew of the Major and his dagger, which wasn’t much. Her blue eyes opened wider. Now he too had an official reason to travel to Durham. Helen also believed that there’d probably been some collaboration between her mother and Mr Mackenzie. It could hardly have been prearranged though. Just a coincidence — yet another coincidence! — and a fortunate one from the point of view of Mrs Scott, who did not wish her daughter to go on her mission unaccompanied.

So while his wife would be doing her best to persuade her aunt Julia Howlett away from her devotion to Eustace Flask, Tom would take a statement from a Major-turned-touring-magician who wanted to let the world know that he had come honestly by the item known as the Lucknow Dagger.

It was all very odd.

At about the same time as Tom and Helen Ansell were discussing Ernest Smight’s suicide, a man in working clothes turned off Lower Thames Street in the area immediately to the east of London Bridge. He walked down Penharbour Lane, which was little more than an alley between factories and warehouses. The evening was miserable with drizzle. The man arrived at a building which seemed to have had all the life squeezed out of it by its bigger, taller neighbours on either side. At the bottom of a flight of steps was a basement door. Above the door there swung and flickered an oil lamp, hanging from a rusty bracket.