Chapter Twenty-Four
Mumble and Jessie.
Charlotte was not particularly surprised. The two young boxers, with their midnight surveillance and their likely breaking and entering, had already made it clear that their interest in their late sponsor far exceeded what would be considered normal.
It made sense that they were investigating for Mrs. Farr, who had loved her sister fiercely and had been consumed with grief and anger.
Vengeance is mine; I will repay.
Charlotte, as Sherrinford Holmes, had disclosed to Mrs. Farr the reason Mimi Duffin had been murdered—she bore a resemblance to someone else—but not the identity of the party responsible for her death. Even Inspector Treadles had not known the truth. How, then, had Mrs. Farr learned who had killed her sister?
Had she found a circuitous route to the truth?
It was not impossible. She could have gleaned from the papers that at the time Sherlock Holmes had been assisting with the investigation at Stern Hollow, home of one Lord Ingram Ashburton. But reporters had been given an extremely redacted version of events, and Lord Bancroft’s name never once came up. With such scant information, could she have inferred the significance of this brother who had retired from public life shortly thereafter?
And even if Mrs. Farr, ill-informed on the inner complexities of the case, had been able to make that spectacular leap of logic, how would she have found out that Mr. Underwood had worked for Lord Bancroft? Lord Bancroft’s had been a shadowy role, and Mr. Underwood, officially at least, hadn’t even belonged to the same ministry.
Yet Mumble and Jessie, after quietly carrying on with their lives after Mr. Underwood’s disappearance, had suddenly become extremely interested in his whereabouts.
What had caused this volte-face? And had they killed Mr. Underwood, at Mrs. Farr’s behest, to avenge Mimi Duffin?
The thought jarred, given the praise the young people had heaped on Mr. Underwood. Charlotte rarely shied away from jarring possibilities, but this one raised a thorny question.
Lord Bancroft had demanded to know who killed Mr. Underwood and why. But if it was indeed Mumble, Jessie, and ultimately Mrs. Farr who were responsible for Mr. Underwood’s death, could Charlotte simply hand over their names—and their fate—to that man?
But if she didn’t, then what about Bernadine?
Mumble was not at work this day, but Jessie was. Charlotte, having visited the tea shop earlier in her old-woman disguise, returned shortly before four as herself, bought a few things, and exited in time to see Jessie leave from the alley in the back, a shopping basket in hand, and merge into the crowd of pedestrians.
The girl walked almost faster than an omnibus. Charlotte had not imagined, at the beginning of her career, that stamina would be such an important part of her work. Thankfully, she had become a fitter and stronger woman during the past year and she had invested in first-rate walking boots.
She was almost beginning to suspect that perhaps Miss Jessica Ferguson took no precautions about being followed when Jessie stopped at a cheesemonger’s shop. That gave Charlotte time to slip into a nearby alley and reemerge with the feathers on her hat removed, a dingy shawl covering much of her jacket, and her rather stuffed handbag turned inside out and, with some folds released, transformed into a large shopping bag.
Jessie exited the cheesemonger’s with a round of hard cheese. She stuck it inside her shopping basket and looked about casually, as if deciding where to go next. Charlotte, bent over to examine a costermonger’s selection of wilted lettuces, saw out of the corner of her eye that Jessie continued down the street.
Two intersections later Jessie disappeared into a bakery. This gave Charlotte pause. Mrs. Hatfield was not generous, but according to the talkative waitress who had served Charlotte today, the proprietress did give reasonable discounts to her employees on her increasingly famous unadulterated breads. Therefore it made no sense for Jessie to visit another bakery on her way home.
Charlotte estimated where the back door of the bakery might be located, turned onto the intersecting street, and slipped behind an advertising column. There she dropped her shawl and her small toque into her bag and put on a long apron and a starched cap. Then she rounded to the other side of the advertising column to study all the handbills stuck to it, as if she were a serving maid stealing a moment of leisure.
She had her back to the street, but from the reflection of a nearby window, she caught sight of Jessie inching toward the opening of the back alley. Jessie turned left and hurried, heading west when earlier she’d been headed south. But then she turned left once more and was again going in her original direction, except on a different street.
She turned back to look a time or two. But Charlotte, now divested of the apron and holding out a large umbrella—it had conveniently begun to rain—blended into an entire pavement of foot traffic, a veritable river of black umbrellas.
Jessie did not go home or into the chemist’s, even though she passed close to both. Instead, she veered a few streets farther west and let herself into a house that had a pocket-sized yet deeply utilized front garden. Trellises placed all around the periphery supported peas, beans, and aubergine. A variety of herbs crowded a small raised bed to one side. To the other side, chard, chicory, and radishes grew in their own minuscule plots.
Not too far away, Charlotte found a school of industrial and commercial art and engaged the gregarious gate guard in a conversation about what sort of students were admitted to the school and where they could reasonably be expected to find posts after finishing their curriculum.
She was beginning to wonder how else she could linger nearby when Jessie emerged and solved the problem for her. Jessie went directly home. Charlotte, having followed in her wake, strolled around her neighborhood for some time, enough to assure herself that fifteen minutes later Jessie was still home, her person visible from the open window, wiping down walls and furniture in the front room.
Charlotte headed for the house Jessie had visited.
?Her knock was answered more swiftly than she’d anticipated.
“I was wondering when you’d remember your shawl, Jes—”
The woman who opened the door had one eye that was milky and blind, the other a deep periwinkle blue. Mrs. Farr.
Her welcoming expression congealed into wariness. “Who are you?”
She looked much frailer than Charlotte remembered, as if she’d been gravely ill and lingered at death’s door a good long while and was only now slowly recovering. Her voice was scratchy, her hair thin, her stark black dress loose and shapeless around her frame.
Yet at the sight of a stranger on her doorstep, her gaze sharpened into a dagger. The beautiful mystique that had so struck the Harcourt mother and daughter was nowhere in evidence, only the stone-hard defenses of a survivor facing fresh danger.
Before Charlotte could introduce herself, Mrs. Farr’s eyes narrowed—the misfortune that had taken the sight of her left eye had not affected the muscles that controlled the movements of her eyelids. “Where have I seen you before?”
Charlotte shoved back an irrational surge of fear. “You first saw me near the General Post Office last summer. I was wearing a jacket-and-skirt set in blue twill. You had a little girl with you, and I was so moved by your plight I gave her more money than I should, as well as my luncheon. But for my trouble, your daughter took the pound note I had in my pocket.”
Mrs. Farr frowned. “And you’re here for that pound?”
Charlotte moved past her into the foyer and closed the front door. Now she spoke with Sherrinford Holmes’s voice—or, as close as she could get to his slightly garbled enunciation without an orthodontic device in her mouth. “No need. I had my purser charge you an extra pound when I investigated your sister’s disappearance last autumn.”
“That was you?” Mrs. Farr’s voice now sounded like a saw dragged across a brick.
Charlotte had been highly helpful to her as Sherrinford Holmes—and highly solicitous. But there was no acknowledgment of any kind in Mrs. Farr’s question, only a heightened distrust.
“I am a woman of many faces—for work, that is.”
“What do you want?”
“Shall we discuss it over tea, like civilized people?” said Charlotte, wading deeper into the house.
Mrs. Farr’s parlor was cramped with a great many mismatched chairs. The floor sagged underfoot. The wallpaper’s pattern was hardly discernible. The place was clean, and more or less tidy, but it was clear that the hostess gave few thoughts to how her house might appear to a caller.
“Recently I’ve been working on a private inquiry concerning the unsolved murder of one Mr. Victor Meadows,” said Charlotte, from the middle of the room.
Mrs. Farr had been standing by the parlor door, watching Charlotte. At her late husband’s name, a great rigidity took hold of her, as if she stared not at Charlotte but directly into the eyes of a basilisk.
“I see you recognize that name, Mrs. Farr,” Charlotte murmured. “I am on calling terms with Miss Harcourt, your niece by marriage. Her mother, Mrs. Harcourt, is no more. But thanks to a photograph she took many years ago, I was able to recognize you and Miss Duffin.”
Mrs. Farr did not speak. She did not even seem to breathe.
Charlotte dug deep into her shopping bag and extricated a brown paper package of baked goods. On the rickety round table next to the fireplace, the tea things that had been there for Jessie’s visit hadn’t been removed yet. She refilled the kettle from a nearby pitcher of water and placed it to boil on a spirit lamp. By the time Mrs. Farr shuffled into the parlor, Charlotte had already set out the lemon biscuits and sliced pound cake she’d purchased from Mrs. Hatfield’s tea shop earlier in the afternoon.
“What do you want?” asked Mrs. Farr once again, this time more insistently.
Her voice remained raspy, but her accent had changed, the roughness of the streets dropping away to a polish acquired by elocution exercises overseen by a strict governess.
Charlotte seated herself. “I am not entirely certain. The Christmas Eve Murder, you see, could very well be subject to a new investigation.
“Looking at the case, it may not be difficult for someone to make the argument that you committed the murder and were let off the hook because the investigating officer did not want a beautiful young woman to hang.”
Mrs. Farr gave a lopsided, rictus-like smile. “The poor inspector. What did he do to deserve this?”
A sarcastic reply.
“I am also interested in that,” said Charlotte. “In the meanwhile, I have some guesses about what happened that fateful Christmas Eve. As so much remains unknown, my guesses necessarily rest on a number of assumptions.
“First I assume that the police inspector assigned to the case was a capable investigator. The report he authored was clear and cogent—I can infer from that only a high degree of professional proficiency.
“Next I assume that the attachment Mrs. Harcourt felt toward you was genuine. Judging by the open, indeed eager, manner with which Miss Harcourt speaks of you, and the unrestricted discussion she and her mother had held on the murder over the years, I would have to conclude that either the late Mrs. Harcourt had a completely clear conscience with regard to you, Mrs. Farr, or that she was the most devious liar and criminal I’ve ever had the misfortune of coming across.”
Mrs. Farr’s lips twitched, as if amused by the idea of her late sister-in-law as an arrant evildoer.
“For the moment, I choose the former interpretation: Mrs. Harcourt felt free to discuss the murder not out of a culprit-at-large’s desire to gloat but because she was riveted. And because she was anxious for you after your disappearance from Manchester.
“With those two assumptions in place, we can begin to consider an intriguing observation Mrs. Harcourt made to her daughter: that she herself, by all means a suitable main suspect, received little attention from the police.
“If we accept that as an expression of genuine bafflement, and if we accept the premise of the detective inspector’s general competence, then we cannot consider it an oversight on his part. I posit that he showed scant interest in Mrs. Harcourt because he already knew she was not guilty, which implies that he knew who was guilty.”
“But if he knew who committed the murder, why did he make no arrest?”
Mrs. Farr, recovered from her initial shock, had taken a seat across the tea table from Charlotte. Her question sounded casual, that of a politely interested bystander.
The kettle burbled and steamed. Charlotte warmed the teapot, which she’d emptied earlier, then set fresh tea to steep. A pedestrian walking by the house would have paid little heed to this most ordinary tableau, two women at tea, gossiping about neighbors and the price of milk.
“I cannot speak in absolutes,” Charlotte carried on, “but it is quite possible that you murdered Mr. Victor Meadows, your late husband.”
Mrs. Farr crossed her arms over her chest. “His bedroom was locked from the inside, both doors.”
“True, but when were they locked? The maid who came to relight the fire in the morning hadn’t expected to encounter a blocked entry. And judging by the evidence you gave, you also found it unusual that the connecting door between the master’s and the mistress’s bedrooms was barred on your husband’s side.
“An argument could be made that a disgruntled rabble-rouser from the factories entered the bedroom from the window—in his stockinged feet, as he left no prints—and proceeded to lock the doors from inside to prevent any disruption to his deadly work.
“But it is just as likely that the murderer entered Mr. Meadows’s typically unbarred bedroom from inside the house. And then, wishing to give the impression that someone not of the house had taken his life, locked the doors and opened a window.”
“And then leaped to the ground?”
“And then walked across the architrave. The distance is only fifteen feet or so. The architrave is three inches wide at the top. A daring and dexterous individual can manage the trek without the aid of the climbing vines that covered the wall. With the vines, a determined soul, even one lacking all training and experience, can make it to the nearest window, which happened to be yours.”
“You think that so easy? You think you can manage to move fifteen feet on a ledge narrower than the width of your hand, in the dark, in the cold, without falling off?”
“Only at the height of desperation would I attempt such a thing. And I would more likely than not plummet to the ground. But then again, I have always enjoyed cake a little more than is good for me,” said Charlotte, biting into a slice of surprisingly well-made pound cake, moist and crumbly.
“But that I am doomed to fail does not mean someone else could not have succeeded at the same endeavor. Let’s suppose that I were built more favorably for such trials. Since I’d have decided, beforehand, that I wanted the murder to appear to have been committed by outsiders, hopefully I’d have also thought of other difficulties that might arise.
“The murder weapon, for one thing. The most likely weapon would be Mr. Meadows’s own shaving blade, a sharp implement close at hand. After the deed was done, most of the blood could have been wiped off on the already blood-soaked bedcover. And then the murderer could have given the razor blade a wash in the en-suite bath.
“The house is no longer so new. But at the time it was built, it boasted of every modern convenience, including plumbed washbasins. Good plumbing, too—I tested it myself when I visited. The water came nice and quiet, without the kind of rattling of the pipes that happens in some houses.
“The now thoroughly clean shaving blade could have been dried and placed in its customary spot, looking as if it had never been disturbed since the last time the master had need of its sharp edge.
“As for the murderer’s clothes—frankly, I would have taken off my clothes to do the deed. The way the killing was carried out, with the bedcover between the blade and the murderer, there wouldn’t have been much blood on the killer in the first place besides on the dominant hand.
“With the murder weapon put away, and blood on skin washed off, the murderer could now lock the doors and brave the journey of fifteen feet on the architrave—with some clothes on, if that was deemed necessary.”
Mrs. Farr made a derisive snort. “You make it sound so easy.”
“I certainly do not mean to diminish the forethought in the planning or the audacity of the deed itself. But so far, what I have narrated is a perfect crime. And a perfect crime would not do.”
Did she observe a darkening of Mrs. Farr’s countenance?
“Where did it go wrong? The ladder that had been moved from its customary spot near the gardener’s hut and left on the ground? The murderer had moved it, but never intended to use it—once it was brought in the morning to climb into the locked bedroom, who could tell that it hadn’t been used the night before?
“But no, the detective inspector wouldn’t have been there to see you move the ladder—and no one else mentioned such a thing in their testimony. So it wasn’t that.
“What gave you away probably had something to do with the most puzzling aspect of this otherwise simple case—your late husband’s absolute docility. Granted, he was sleeping, but his throat wasn’t cut as such. Whoever killed him first pulled up the duvet so that it not only thoroughly covered his throat but stretched a foot beyond the top of his head. And then the killer had to put his or her hand under the cover and find Mr. Meadows’s neck. And only then, carefully place the blade.
“Not to mention, given his position on the bed and the direction his throat was cut, the killer must have practically straddled him. I am a sound sleeper, but with so much fuss, even I would have opened my eyes to see what was going on.
“But Mr. Meadows slept on soundly. Too soundly. Which makes me suspect that he had been given a narcotic substance. And that could be verified by chemical analysis. Or, even if it could not be, most laymen would not know. The threat of exposure might be enough for the truth to emerge.”
A muscle twitched in Mrs. Farr’s jaw.
Charlotte poured two cups of tea and placed one in front of her. “What do you think of the scenario I’ve illustrated? Does it fit the general contour of events as you recall?”
“I’ve listened to you long enough, Miss Holmes.”
“Indeed, you have been very patient, Mrs. Farr. Do you not have rebuttals for me? Are my assumptions unable to support my conclusions? Or are there facts that I am entirely unaware of that would change the complexion of the case? Milk or sugar, by the way?”
Mrs. Farr ignored her attempt at hospitality. “You should go.”
“I will,” Charlotte promised calmly, adding two lumps of sugar and a good pour of milk into her own tea. “But I’d like to know what happened to your brother-in-law, Mr. Ephraim Meadows. The way you disappeared from Manchester, without a word to anyone, it makes me think that you were trying to escape extortion. Did he blackmail you? And did you, in the end, find a way to make him stop?”
“I never saw Mr. Ephraim Meadows after my husband’s funeral, Miss Holmes,” said Mrs. Farr flatly. “And I have no idea what happened to him.”
“Is that so?”
Charlotte took a sip of her tea. Alas, Mrs. Farr took as little interest in her tea as she did in her décor—Charlotte suspected that the flavorlessness of the brew was caused by secondhand tea leaves, collected and peddled by servants from wealthier households.
“That is so.” Mrs. Farr pushed her own teacup aside. “And I do not care about either your investigation or the official reinvestigation, should that ever take place. There was no evidence to incriminate anyone then, and there is no evidence now. Without evidence, nothing will happen. Therefore, will you go?”
A little girl entered the parlor.
She seemed disappointed to see Charlotte but looked toward Mrs. Farr, as if waiting for introductions. When none proved to be forthcoming, she said, a little hesitantly, “Mama, did Jessie come?”
“Yes, and she already left.”
“Oh,” said the girl in a small voice.
“But Mumble will be here later. And Caro, too. Now be a good girl and go read in your room. If you can understand the new story all by yourself, I’ll have Caro make some sherbet for you.”
The girl’s face lit with anticipation. “All right.”
Charlotte smiled at little Eliza, who had, once upon a time, robbed her blind. “She’s grown taller,” she said after the girl left the parlor.
The patience and tenderness that had come into Mrs. Farr’s countenance at the sight of her adopted child fled at Charlotte’s words. But Charlotte did not allow her to make yet another attempt at eviction.
“To be perfectly honest, Mrs. Farr, I also don’t care about the Christmas Eve Murder, for the exact same reasons you listed. As you were a former client, I merely consider it an obligation to caution you of potential trouble on the horizon. But that’s not the only reason why I have called on you today, not even the primary one.
“You see, around the time I was asked to look into your late husband’s death, I also accepted another commission, to investigate the disappearance of one Mr. William Underwood.”
Mrs. Farr’s eyelids twitched, but she said nothing.
“Lord Bancroft Ashburton, Mr. Underwood’s former superior and the one who asked me to inquire into the matter, suggested that perhaps Mr. Underwood’s ties to boxing had turned out to be troublesome. As I had no other clues, I started by finding his protégés, two of whom are apparently closely connected to you.
“Mumble and Jessie have been described to me as foster siblings. Were you their foster mother, Mrs. Farr?”
Mrs. Farr still said nothing.
“I will take your silence as a non-denial then.” Charlotte took a sip of her tea—she had decided to think of it as sweetened water, a decent enough beverage for a woman who had walked many miles this day. “It soon came to my attention that Mumble and Jessie had been at the villa where Mr. Underwood and his mistress once resided. The mistress moved to a town house about six weeks ago. There is a strong suggestion that Mumble and Jessie were also at the town house in recent days.
“And that is a dangerous position for these two foster children of yours. He is Roma—it is almost assured that any hint of misdeed on his part would become guilt itself. Jessie’s situation is not much better. She is an orphaned girl who boxes. A woman with a propensity toward violence? Who knows what else she would be capable of? Criminality would be the easiest assumption.”
Mrs. Farr’s jaw clenched.
“Why are you so interested in Mr. Underwood, Mrs. Farr, to an extent that you have steered these otherwise promising young people onto a path of potential ruin?”
“That is none of your business.”
“Indeed not. But I admire their dedication to you and do not wish to see their future thrown away for an old woman’s whim.”
Mrs. Farr’s fingers dug into the armrests of her chair.
Somewhere outside the parlor, footsteps sounded on a creaky staircase, followed by a whispered conversation, which sounded like someone trying to convince Eliza to go back upstairs and resume her reading.
“However,” Charlotte carried on, “if you think I am trying to put a stop to your madness, you are mistaken. I’m here to tell you that Mumble and Jessie are in far greater trouble than you can imagine. The woman whose houses they broke into to search for clues to Mr. Underwood’s whereabouts has been found dead, shot three times in the back. Mr. Underwood, too, is dead.”
The whispers outside the parlor stopped.
“I don’t believe you,” said Mrs. Farr.
“You don’t need to believe me,” said Charlotte, “but that will not change the facts. Mr. Underwood is no more, and whatever you wanted of him—unless Mumble and Jessie killed him—”
Mrs. Farr slammed her hand down on the table. “Of course they didn’t!”
The tea service rattled. Charlotte drained her sugared and milk-cloudy hot water. “That aside, whatever you wanted from Mr. Underwood, you will never have it now. Best tell Mumble and Jessie to leave London for a while, if you still care about them.”