Breaking the Circle, page 11
Arnold Boggs was a man of few ideas, but they were firmly entrenched in his head and he shared them wholeheartedly with his wife of many years whom he referred to at all times and often to her face as Mrs Boggs. They believed that the country was Going To The Dogs. That in general terms, most people were No Better Than They Should Be. The streets were full of garbage both animate and inanimate. The policeman shook his head and almost spoke aloud as if Mrs Boggs was standing at his elbow. Here was an Unfortunate who had taken a drop too much. He and Mrs Boggs had a nice bottle of sherry in every year for Christmas, but other than that, they abstained. Unlike this one here. He prodded her again with his toe and was just deciding that he could walk on under the ‘stiff not getting appreciably stiffer’ rule, when the pile of clothing gave a groan and turned over, her face fitfully illuminated by the policeman’s bullseye lantern.
He bent down. His worst nightmare lay at his feet. Not a drunk. Not a corpse. A woman who seemed to be quite seriously injured, but still alive. Muttering imprecations, he fished out his whistle, disillusioned police constables for the use of, and sent its sharp blasts echoing across the empty park and into the teeming streets at his back.
The woman, dimly aware that help was at hand, let her head flop back and darkness overtake her. She wasn’t quite sure what had happened, but it was all going to be all right now. The golden clouds which had parted above her head to reveal her parents, brother and sister and – for some unfathomable reason – next door’s late dog, closed up again, the heavenly choirs became quieter and soon, if she could currently hear anything at all, Christina Plunkett was rocked on the waves of running feet, shouts and bells that betokened that London’s finest were on their way.
‘So,’ Margaret put her feet up on the sofa now that she, Flambard and Thomas had retired to the softer seats reserved for the very few, ‘Colonel Carruthers.’
‘Eddie Carruthers is a slave to the bottle,’ Flambard told her, helping himself to another round of Thomas’s toast.
‘No!’ Margaret feigned horror and surprise, though she had noticed in the first few minutes of being in the man’s company that it would be unwise to go near him with a naked flame.
‘He didn’t get that high colour by serving in India. In fact, as far as my researches have gone, the furthest east he has been is Colchester.’
‘Did he see Muriel privately?’
‘I get the impression not, though I could be wrong.’
‘I had him down as a rather shy, sweet man, a bit of a simple soul,’ Margaret said. ‘I was quietly astonished that he’d reached the rank he has. I always assume colonels had to have a certain steel about them.’
‘Pay Corps,’ Flambard said in a hail of crumbs. ‘Man’s a glorified accountant.’
‘The demon drink, though,’ Margaret said. ‘We all know how it can change a man.’
‘It can,’ Thomas chimed in. ‘I remember a vicar back when I was first …’ he glanced under his eyelashes at Margaret. His past wasn’t all something he would wish to share. ‘First in service.’ That would do. ‘And he used to hit the old communion wine something chronic. In the end, he saw things crawling up the vestry walls and they had to put him away. Took four of them in the end, just to hold him down.’ He sighed, far away and long ago. ‘The good old days.’
‘Agatha Dunwoody.’ Margaret moved the conversation on.
‘Sweet enough old girl now,’ Flambard said, ‘but in her youth, a little light of finger.’
‘Oh?’
‘She married well – Alexander Dunwoody, of Dunwoody, Dunwoody, Pettigrew and Dunwoody – but after the birth of her first child, she became unhinged. Some women do, apparently. It’s all part of the human condition. She was caught shop-lifting in Harrods.’
‘No rubbish, then,’ Thomas commented.
‘Again, as with Boothby, it was kept out of the papers, even when she did it several times more – Liberty’s, I believe.’
‘Tut, tut,’ Thomas shook his head. ‘Her standards were slipping. Much more of this and it’ll be Isaac’s Old Clo’ Emporium in the Balls Pond Road.’
The others ignored him.
‘Dunwoody stepped in, as only lawyers can, and made it all go away.’
‘That’s a far cry from murder, though, isn’t it?’
‘It is,’ Flambard agreed, ‘but you must remember, Dr Murray, that my brief, as given to me by the Society for Psychical Research, is to expose fraud, not find murderers.’ He smiled wryly. ‘I leave that to finer minds.’
‘Robert Grimes.’ Margaret was stirring her second cup of tea.
‘Ah,’ Flambard sat up. ‘Now, this one is interesting. What do you make of him?’
‘I was a little surprised to see him there,’ Margaret said. ‘He’s by far the youngest of the Circle and rather flippant, I’d say.’
‘So would I,’ Flambard agreed, ‘To the extent that I wondered whether he might not be another occult investigator – strictly amateur, of course.’
‘Of course.’
‘He seems to be something in the City – and not short of a bob or two. As for his interest in the Other Side, I have no idea. I came to the conclusion that he was in it for the laughs. There is one thing that’s slightly odd.’
‘Say on.’
‘Well, an archaeologist like you must spend many a happy hour rummaging about in the Record Office, public museums and the like.’
‘I do,’ Margaret agreed.
‘Well, I don’t. I find family trees utterly bewildering. So, it took me several weeks to track down young Grimes’s antecedents.’
‘And?’
‘Well, I don’t know how much this sort of thing runs in families,’ Flambard said, ‘but Grimes had an uncle who was hanged for murder.’
‘The hanged man.’ Margaret remembered the tarot card at the murder scene of Evadne Principal.
‘The same,’ Flambard said. ‘Now, don’t tell me you read the cards, Dr Murray.’ He was chuckling.
‘As the Bard reminds us, Mr Flambard,’ she said, ‘there are more things in heaven and earth …’
‘Yes, well,’ Flambard scowled. ‘William Shakespeare would never have been allowed into the Society for Psychical Research, I can tell you – far too gullible. Ghosts and ghoulies, floating daggers and lions whelping in the streets – what a load of rubbish!’
‘Do you have the details of the Grimes murder?’ Margaret asked.
‘Of course,’ Flambard bridled. ‘I may not enjoy archives, Dr Murray, but I do get results. Gregory Grimes was a confidence trickster, helping himself to other people’s money. He was too cocky by half and one of his victims threatened to expose him. Her name, if memory serves, was Rachael Cadman – the Worcestershire Cadmen, several times removed. She had it out with him, and he killed her.’
‘Do we know how?’ Margaret asked.
‘Stoved in her head with a blunt object they never found.’
‘Where and when was this?’
‘The papers were full of the war at the time. Mafeking was on every page. The Grimes case was consigned to the small print. The Billingtons made a killing, of course, as always.’
‘Goes with the territory,’ Thomas growled. Some of his closest friends had had narrow misses with the Billington family.
‘As to where,’ Flambard went on, ‘I believe it was Sydenham. Specifically in Miss Cadman’s front parlour.’
A silence descended.
‘And last,’ Margaret broke it, ‘and perhaps least of the Bermondsey Circle, Christina Plunkett.’
It was just a short drive in the ambulance to Guy’s Hospital from Christina Plunkett’s temporary resting place in Jamaica Road. A constable ran into the hallway in advance of the stretcher, calling for help, and soon the nurses and one rather disgruntled doctor surrounded the little woman, who was by now deeply unconscious. The doctor didn’t bother even to remove his coat, but looked down from the lofty height of one who knew that his station in life did not require him to deal with drunken prostitutes.
‘Dead,’ he barked. He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. ‘Mortuary.’
The police constable at the head end of the stretcher looked furtive. He wasn’t a doctor, he would be the first to admit, but he had been a stretcher bearer in Africa in the late, Great War and knew a dead person from a live one and this woman was definitely alive. She was actually moving, something which he had always considered to be something of a decider in such matters. His oppo at the feet end hefted the weight of the woman and set off in the direction of the mortuary, as designated by the signs on the wall and the black arrows on the floor.
‘No, Jim,’ the ex-stretcher bearer said. ‘She’s not dead.’
The other constable looked over his shoulder. ‘Doc says she is,’ and set off again, almost dragging his colleague along behind in his zeal to get rid of this job and go on to something more congenial, known colloquially as Mrs Maw, the landlady of the Havelock Arms just across the railway line from where he was standing, if he popped out the back way, through the mortuary exit. He tugged at the stretcher again. He could almost feel the compliant weight of Mrs Maw wrapped around him and he was in a hurry.
‘But she isn’t!’ Constable Michael Crawford had not reached the exalted heights of his cousin Andrew, nor had he made an advantageous marriage. He didn’t have his cousin’s brains, or his looks. In fact, the family always went a little misty eyed when comparing the two, taking into account Michael’s unfortunate squint and his habit of passing wind when stressed, but they all had to agree that they had one thing in common. Once they had decided on something, they were like the proverbial ox in the furrow. Constable Crawford had decided that this woman was not going to the mortuary and he spread his feet and hung back accordingly.
A nurse hurrying past with a bedpan stopped by the bickering pair. ‘Is there a problem?’ she asked, in the tones of someone who doesn’t want to get involved any more than she had to be.
‘No,’ the foot-end policeman said, tugging.
‘Yes,’ Crawford said. ‘This woman isn’t dead.’
The nurse glanced down. ‘No,’ she said, crisply. ‘Of course she isn’t. Why are you arguing? She has her eyes open, for heaven’s sake.’
The foot-end constable was dubious. He had seen more corpses than many people had had hot dinners and as many of them had had their eyes open as shut. ‘Means nothing,’ he said.
‘It does when she’s blinking,’ the nurse said, passing the bedpan to a passing porter. ‘Get her on to a bed, quickly.’ She looked around and saw a vacant one in a corner. ‘Look, over there.’ She bent to the woman who was starting to look rather frantic, the smell of carbolic and the random screams of the hospital’s night-time denizens beginning to pierce the mist of her injuries.
Constable Crawford, suddenly the important one with the head end, led the way, and Christina Plunkett was placed carefully on the bed where she relaxed, closing her eyes again with a sigh. There was something about the four-square cast iron of the frame and the flock of the mattress that made her feel that perhaps, after all, she wouldn’t be passing over any time soon.
The nurse bustled in between the constables and the bed, shooing them away as only a nurse can. Constable Crawford turned to the woman for one last look. It wasn’t every day you could tell yourself you had prevented someone making a trip to the morgue. He took in the diminutive stature, the wildish hair, the kindly face and he froze. He tapped the nurse on the arm.
‘Yes?’ She was now in charge and wanted him to know it.
‘Is there a bag or anything under the blanket?’ He knew he was a policeman, but even so, rummaging in a lady’s doings seemed a little too familiar.
The nurse looked and shook her head. She hated these cases. She had seen too many women come in with no name and no home and sadly, all too often, nothing to put on their grave.
Constable Michael Crawford felt his heart beating in his throat. He had been at his cousin’s wedding and, although it was a few years ago now, he thought he knew this woman, one of the honoured guests. This was Dr Margaret Murray, or he was a Dutchman.
Archie Flambard had not been able to find out anything to Christina Plunkett’s detriment, much to his annoyance. He liked to describe himself as someone who spoke as he found, called a spade a spade and similar clichés, but the truth was sometimes almost too boring for words. Her parents and a couple of siblings were dead, something that she had in common with a large majority. She had a small but adequate income from canny investments by a grandfather, so she lived comfortably enough, though not in splendour. Her maid, who came in daily, either knew nothing bad about her or was above reproach when it came to taking bribes. In short, Christina Plunkett might very well have been the only member of the Bermondsey Spiritualist Circle who had a spotless record. Archie Flambard chewed a nail and hunched forward over the table, annoyed at his failure.
‘Some people are just … good people,’ Thomas said, though in his life he could think of few to whom that would apply and one of them was sitting right there.
‘He’s quite right, Mr Flambard,’ Margaret added. ‘It is bad research to look for something until you find it. You must approach this kind of thing with an open mind and no end in view for it to be relevant.’
Flambard looked unimpressed. That didn’t sound like much fun to him.
‘When I met Miss Plunkett, I must say I immediately felt she was a very nice woman. She shone as the best of the whole Circle. Friendly. Open.’ She shrugged and turned to Thomas with a grin. ‘And, following the principle of similia similibus curentur, you would agree that she has to be very pleasant, as she and I could be sisters.’
Thomas nodded wisely, as he often did when in Margaret Murray’s company. He had learned a lot that way.
Archie Flambard agreed. ‘You certainly do have more than a passing resemblance,’ he said. He lifted the lid of the teapot and peered in. ‘I could squeeze another cup out of this, Thomas,’ he said, ‘but …’
‘I’ll go and make some fresh.’ Hospitality had not always been Thomas’s strong suit, but he found it suited him these days and it was good to him. ‘Anyone got any room for more toast? A muffin?’
His guests both shook their heads.
‘I’ve got gentleman’s relish.’
‘Oh, go on, then,’ Margaret said, turning to Flambard. ‘He makes his own, you know. Pounds the anchovies and everything, from scratch. He’s such a stickler.’
They sat in silence for a while. Margaret was not impressed with Archie Flambard, either as a researcher or a person. He had lied to her, which she found somewhat unappealing, conveniently forgetting that she had done just the same. But his research – woeful. Wrong technique and dubious results. But at least she could cross him off the list of suspects. Possibly.
There had been quite a lot of discussion in the Crawford household about the telephone. Of course, they had to have one, Angela knew that. Although Andrew was currently only a sergeant, she knew he was destined for greater things. But she thought it was rather common to have it anywhere other than in the study, where men spent their time, at least in the world in which she had grown up. He, quite sensibly as far as he could tell, pointed out that emergencies seldom happened when a gentleman was taking his ease with brandy and a cigar after dinner. They happened in the early hours, when he was just turning over and having a good scratch before getting up to face the day. They happened when everyone with any sense was fast asleep. So he wanted to have it by the bed. The children and the servants, after all, slept a whole floor above, so it wasn’t as if the bell would disturb anyone but them. And if Angela found it disturbing, she could always wear earplugs. So, the bedroom it was.
Andrew Crawford was in the middle of a very complex dream when the bells started to ring. He couldn’t work out why, in the middle of a swim in the Thames accompanied by several mermaids, some cows and a hippopotamus, there should be bells, but there were and very persistent ones too. Then, one of the mermaids poked him in the back and shouted at him, though he couldn’t make out the words. It was probably because she was playing a tenor saxophone at the time. Then, suddenly, like an explosion, everything was clear and he was sitting up, the earpiece to his ear, the mouthpiece in the general position of his mouth.
‘Hello?’ He knew he should say his name, but couldn’t quite call it to mind. ‘Hello?’
‘Andrew?’ The voice was familiar but he couldn’t place it. ‘Andrew, it’s me, Michael.’ The caller waited for recognition but with a sigh realized there would be none. ‘Michael. Michael Crawford. Your cousin. Michael.’
‘Oh. Michael. Of course. Umm … how are you?’ Crawford was looking around frantically for his pocket watch, for a candle, for anything to give him some kind of grounding. Just knowing what time it was would help enormously.
‘Sorry to ring so late.’
Ah, that was something. At least they hadn’t overslept.
‘But I thought I should let you know, because she doesn’t have any identification on her, so we don’t know who to contact.’
No. This wasn’t helping. They seemed to have gone back to square one. Should he know what this was all about? He hadn’t seen his cousin since the wedding, but he knew that family feuds could rumble on unnoticed for years, so perhaps …
‘Then I remembered you were on the phone.’
‘Right. So you have rung me to say …’
‘There’s no easy way to tell you.’
‘Michael.’ Crawford had heard his cousin prevaricate for hours and decided it was time for some straight talking. ‘Easy or hard, please tell me your news. If it’s something to do with the family, tomorrow will do. If it’s anything else, spit it out, man.’ He was aware that Angela was growing somewhat restive and he could see a night or two in the dressing room in his immediate future.
‘It’s Miss Murray. From your wedding. She’s in Guy’s Hospital not expected to live through the night. I thought you’d want to know. Andrew? Andrew?’ Michael Crawford looked at the earpiece of the phone he was using on the desk at the Walworth Police Station, as if it could tell him where his cousin had gone. But it was mute and, eventually, he hung it respectfully back on its hook. He wished he had been able to do more, but he had done his best and, as his and Andrew’s old granny used to say, you can’t do more than your best.
