CHAPTER 7 #2
“Doctors. Those like me who perform autopsies, at any rate. One wouldn’t use them for surgery. The gloves are thick and clumsy. I witnessed an embalming once, and the undertaker wore a pair. For mucking out sewers? Men who work with chemicals or use them for other industrial processes?”
“Someone working with paints?”
“That’s a possibility,” Julia said. “It mostly comes in tubes nowadays, but Mary mentioned mixing colors. I’m trying to remember if I noticed a pair in her studio.”
“It’s worth checking.”
Julia raised the glove. “Would you consider allowing me to remove some of the blood to see what’s underneath?”
“I don’t usually like to tamper with evidence, but in this case . . .”
“Shall we start with the underside of the sleeve? I can leave the rest of the glove as you found it.”
Tennant nodded.
Julia poured out a basin of warm water and unrolled a length of cotton wool. Carefully, she dabbed away the gore from the glove. A multicolored spattering of paint appeared.
“I think you have your answer, Inspector.”
Julia returned the glove to its wrapper and handed it to him. They hadn’t quite resumed their old rapport. Julia felt a lingering constraint between them.
“Well . . .” He hesitated. With a slight shrug, he said, “Now, to find the glove’s mate.” He headed to the door and stopped. “I suppose . . . you think it might have been Miss Allingham on the table if the blackmailer had turned up at the maze that day.”
“The thought had occurred,” Julia said. “Richard, we differed. Let that be the end of it. I don’t expect you to agree with all my opinions.”
“No? That’s what people usually expect.”
“That’s not . . .” Julia smiled ruefully. “Fair enough. But don’t expect me to hold back on my opinions.”
“Only when the sun rises in the west.”
“I say we call a truce.”
“Agreed.”
His expression softened, and a slow smile spread, reaching and warming his gray eyes. He extended his hand, and Julia took it. It felt warm in hers. He held on to her hand with subtly increasing pressure until he finally released it.
Tennant pushed through the double doors. Julia stared as they swung and settled closed. She looked at her palm, and her eyes widened. A smile played on her lips as she packed her scalpels and snapped the catch on her medical bag.
* * *
Two hours later, Sergeant O’Malley drew down a sheet to reveal Margaret Miller’s face and shoulders. A granite-faced Josiah Miller identified his daughter with a single nod.
O’Malley had found several witnesses at the East Indiaman pub who had seen the cooper in his workshop around the time of Margot’s death.
The old man had paid the costs and fines for Micah Miller’s vandalism.
The stepson was out of jail and on the loose, and his whereabouts were hard to pin down.
Josiah Miller had sent him to a ropewalk to purchase some barrel cording on the afternoon of Margot’s murder.
“Bunked off for most of the day,” O’Malley said. “Two hours missing at least. Walking is the lad’s story. Stopped for a pint but couldn’t remember where.”
“And the seaman-boyfriend, Arnie Stackpole?” Tennant said. “Is he still in the wind?”
“I have two lads walking the docks and checking pubs and boardinghouses for him. Not a whisper so far. They’ll go back tomorrow.”
What was left to do was search the victim’s flat. Tennant and O’Malley headed by hansom cab to Margot Miller’s address in Chelsea. They drove the route she might have taken from Kensington, riding along Queen’s Gate to Brompton Road, passing the gardens.
“I peeled away two coppers from the park search to check the cab and omnibus stands as you asked,” O’Malley said.
“That should produce something.”
“The cabbies and ’busmen wouldn’t be forgetting her. She was a fine-looking woman, that Margot Miller.”
“And what about Micah Miller?”
“The lads will be showing Miss Herford’s likeness of him as well. Someone will recall the fella if he was hanging round about.”
When the hansom crossed into Chelsea, O’Malley said, “The Harvey Nicols store is only a quarter mile from Margot’s street. ’Tis just off Brompton Road.”
“Interesting, given the doorman’s evidence that Franny Riley walked in that direction.”
The cab stopped at the last of five houses on a quiet, tree-lined street.
Turn of the century, Tennant guessed by the look of the symmetrical windows that flanked a columned entryway.
At some point, a builder had divided the house into upstairs and downstairs flats; Margot had occupied the ground floor.
Two Kensington constables waited at the front door.
One enterprising officer had located the key under a stone near the front porch. He handed it to Sergeant O’Malley.
“Impressive address for a shopgirl, Paddy,” Tennant said.
“Someone with a coin or two is footing the bill for this place.”
“Let’s see if our constables can find out who it is.”
“All right, lads,” O’Malley said. “Crack on with a neighborhood door-to-door. We want the landlord’s name and a description of any recent male visitors.”
The sergeant inserted the key, and the front door swung smoothly on its hinges.
“’Tis arctic inside,” O’Malley said. “The coal burned down hours ago.”
They entered the large, light-filled, and well-appointed main room of the flat.
Creamy yellow-and-blue upholstery covered the parlor furniture in a style Tennant recognized as French provincial.
Doors opened into a kitchen and a dining room; a hallway led to the flat’s two bedrooms, the smaller of which was unfurnished.
A large, four-poster bed stood in the center of the occupied chamber.
O’Malley opened a wardrobe filled with women’s dresses.
It also held a gentleman’s smoking jacket and two shirts.
A man’s slippers sat on the cabinet floor next to pairs of women’s boots and shoes.
A shaving mirror, table, and bowl occupied the corner near the wardrobe.
Women’s intimate clothing and night things filled most of a bureau on the opposite wall, with one drawer reserved for a gentleman’s use.
“Impressions, Sergeant?”
“All in all, a cozy setup. The furnishings look new. Top quality.”
“All right, Paddy, go through everything in the bedroom. Check garment pockets, look under the mattress, and lift the carpet. You know the drill.”
Tennant returned to the parlor, where an easel by the north-facing window caught his eye. A half-finished still life rested against the wooden panel. Tennant paged through a sheaf of discarded sketches; several showed signs of a second hand at work, suggesting changes of line and shading.
Someone was giving Margot drawing lessons.
Tennant moved to the opposite side of the room where a writing desk held a marble pen holder, an inkwell, and a supply of inexpensive writing paper. He picked up a sheet and held it to the light, looking for a watermark.
The inspector turned his attention to the first of the desk drawers.
He found more writing paper that matched the sheets on the desk, a pile of envelopes, and a box of one-penny stamps.
He jiggled the locked pulls on the middle and bottom drawers.
Tennant was about to force one open when he spotted the edge of a key between the inkstand’s legs. It slipped into the lock and turned.
The middle drawer held a brass-embellished teak box. Tennant’s eyebrows shot up at the wad of five- and ten-pound notes he found inside. What he discovered underneath the bills was more surprising still.
“Paddy, come, please.”
The sergeant appeared at the door. “Sir?”
Tennant placed the box on the desk. “Take a look.”
“For the love of God.” O’Malley shuffled through a stack of hand-printed envelopes. “They’re addressed to all of them—to Miss Allingham and the rest. And five names we’ve not heard before.”
“We’ve found our poison pen.”
“What’s in the bottom drawer?”
Tennant inched it out and found two wooden boxes carved with lotus leaf motifs.
One held twelve stoppered bottles wrapped in tissue paper; the other had ten bottles and two empty slots.
The inspector unwrapped a small blue flask, its label stamped at the top with a company’s name and a lotus leaf crest.
“Laudanum,” Tennant said. “Two dozen bottles of a preparation sold by S. Cooper of London.”
“Two dozen? That’ll leave you fluttered and your head in bits the next morning. She was something of a chancer, our Margot Miller. What was she doing with such a supply?”
“Well, there’s nothing illegal about it, but it’s far more than one would have on hand for personal use.” Tennant replaced the bottle. “Anything to interest us in the bedroom?”
“Clean as a whistle.”
Tennant stowed the boxes in the drawer, and they left the house, locking the door behind them. One of the coppers doing the rounds waited at the gate.
“What have you got for us, lad?” O’Malley said.
“The bloke next door gave us the name of the rent collector, so my partner’s gone off to sort him out. His office is a quarter mile along Brompton Road.”
Tennant asked, “And the door-to-door?”
“The upstairs flat is empty. Has been for the past year, according to the neighbor.”
“What about the other addresses on the street?”
“The ladies at home answered a few questions. All of them had seen Mrs. Miller coming and going.”
“Well, now . . . Mrs. Miller, was it,” O’Malley said.
“A widow-lady, they thought. The sharp-eyed missus one house up sniffed and said she’d spotted a gentleman who arrived by hackney cab at all hours. Day and night.”
“Could the lady identify the gentleman?”
“Rolled by with its shades drawn, she said. Bashful bugger.”
O’Malley grunted. “Married bugger, most like.”
The constable looked at Tennant. “Anything else, guv?”
“Just your final report. I need it by tomorrow morning. I especially want to know the name on the lease.”
* * *