CHAPTER 17 #2
He reached across and gripped her clasped hands. Then he looked up at the sky. “We could pack up and call it a day.”
“No, let’s paint. Let’s at least rough out ideas and return another time.”
Mary sorted through her box, choosing and then rejecting several tubes. After a while, she glanced over at Will. He’d squirted a round of Flake White and had scooped up a daub. He was staring at the paint-smeared palette knife.
“Mary . . . why did they conclude it was suicide?”
“He’d been moody. Morose. He died brooding over that painting of a suicide, Chatterton. The coroner made much of that as . . . as revealing his state of mind. And there were blackmail letters.”
“Do you know what they said?”
Mary shook her head. “And there was the Paris Green paint in his whiskey. I saw the emerald powder spilled across his desk. It couldn’t have been an accident. He drank it deliberately.”
Will looked again at the daub on his palette. “But why would he use your paint? Every kitchen has rodent killer in a cupboard. Every carriage house has it on a shelf somewhere. With a signature, any chemist will sell you arsenic. Could your brother be so cruel?”
“Will, what are you saying?”
He held up the palette knife with its daub of Flake White. “Begin with arsenic in another form.” Then he scraped it into the circle of Paris Green. “And mix the two later.” He swirled the paints with the tip of the knife.
“But—”
“Who was with him the night he died?”
Mary bit her lip. “Doctor Scott was there. He came to play chess, but he’s dead, too. Poisoned. Did you know that?”
“Yes. Who else?”
Mary’s eyes widened. “Sidney Allen. And there are all these things in the newspapers about him. And Rawlings. Rawlings was there, Charles’s manservant. Inspector Tennant has been searching for him for weeks. Good God, is it possible? Have we been wrong all this time?”
“Yes. I think it’s possible.”
Mary bundled her tubes into her paint box. “We must go back. I must tell Louisa. All along, she doubted—and she was right. Inspector Tennant . . . perhaps he suspects, too. Maybe that’s part of it. The reason he arrested Rawlings and is looking for Sidney Allen.”
They packed everything and made their way up the hill. Almost at the top, Mary stopped.
“Will?”
He was a little ahead of her. He put the basket down and waited for her to catch up.
“The newspapers wrote about unspeakable crimes. Kidnapping and prostitution. Does that mean Charles . . .”
Will turned away. “Come along, Mary. We’re nearly at the top.”
They covered the last few yards to the carriage. “Will, why would Rawlings or Sidney Allen want to murder Charles and Margot Miller? Why would anyone?”
Will stowed their equipment and looked at her. “I’ll tell you what I know . . . and my part in the story.”
* * *
Julia’s early afternoon filled with problems and patients. At two o’clock, a lull brought time and tea. Julia opened the casebook, scanning the entries for January, reading on into February, and arriving in mid-March.
She stopped dead. “Good God.”
Julia scrambled to the door and looked left and right for the clinic’s orderly. She called to Clemmie, “Is Jackie back from the chemist?” When the nurse nodded, Julia said, “Ask him to find me a cab—as quick as he can.”
She packed her medical bag and Doctor Scott’s case notes. Jackie Archer and a hansom waited at the door.
“Where to?” Jackie asked.
“Scotland Yard,” Julia said, climbing in. “Driver, take the fastest route you know.”
* * *
On the ride back to Kensington, Will said, “It was a low point, Mary. I was stony broke and grateful to have any commission at all, so I agreed to do the paintings.”
“I see.”
“And if Charles enjoyed looking at . . . well, it seemed a harmless pleasure. Still, I can see how a sister—a young lady—might be shocked.”
“These last few months . . . nothing seems to shock me anymore.”
“More and more, Margot made my skin crawl. The way she used the bribe of bread—and the lure of drink—to make those penniless girls she’d rounded up do her bidding. One girl she’d recruited for my last commission seemed little more than a child.”
“So, you stopped?”
He shrugged. “By then, it was easy to quit. I’d sold a few paintings and had a new commission.” He looked at her. “If I’m honest, it was no grand gesture. I could survive and flourish without him.”
They rocked along in silence for a while.
“What about the rest of it, Will? Charles and his entanglement with Allen and Rawlings?”
“I think Allen may have sought out your brother to exploit his reputation and his old, established firm. Charles may have been in the dark about most of it.”
“And Margot Miller? What of her?”
He turned his head, and Mary waited. Then she touched his arm. “Please, Will.”
He sighed and looked at her. “Your brother’s connection with Margot had nothing to do with this business in the newspapers. It was something she said at our last session. Charles was . . . keeping her. Margot was his mistress.”
Tiny brushstrokes, subtle halftones, and highlights all cohered and formed a picture.
Margot in the studio, buttoning her sable collar, pointing out the likeness of the fur to Mary’s muff, telling her it had been a gift.
Charles, standing in the gallery, gazing at the Margot she’d painted as a Grace, saying she could strike a man dead.
“I’ve been a fool.”
“I’m sorry.”
Mary’s hand flew to her mouth. “Good God!” She shifted in her seat and clutched Will’s arm. “Margot’s unborn child . . . Louisa must never hear about it. The horror and despair . . . it would drive her mad.”
“But can you keep it from her? Should you?”
“I don’t know,” Mary said, shaking her head. “And I still don’t understand. Who would want to kill my brother—and Margot?”
* * *
Mary felt more composed an hour later when the carriage turned into the Blenheim Lodge drive. Will had been quiet for a while.
“Mary, is it possible . . . ?”
“Is what possible?”
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
They passed a little man in a bowler carrying a hatbox. “It’s Mister Petrie,” Mary said, “the furrier from Harvey Nicols.”
The carriage pulled up, and Mary lowered the window. “No cab, Mister Petrie? Did you come all this way by omnibus for your delivery?”
He touched his hat. “I’m on my way home to Soho. I thought I’d deliver this personally to Mrs. Allingham.”
“Soho. Will, can you . . . ?” When he nodded, she said, “Mister Quain can take you on. That’s where he’s heading.”
“I’ll just ring the bell, shall I?” Mr. Petrie said. “And be back in a jiffy.”
Mary nodded. “I’ll catch up with you.”
“Very good, Miss Allingham.”
She turned to Will and smiled. “It’s been quite a day.”
“Shall I come in?”
Mary shook her head. “It’s best that I speak to Louisa alone.”
“Very well.” He took her hand and raised it to his lips.
Mary caught up with the little man at the front portico. Will watched them chat while they waited for the footman, with Petrie doing most of the talking. Then Mary took the box as the door swung open. The furrier touched his hat, hurried to the cab, and climbed in.
“That’s a job well done,” he said. “It pays to go the extra mile for a good customer, I always say.”
Mr. Petrie prattled away. Will, frowning and hardly listening, thought, It can’t be . . . it’s too fantastic.
By the time they’d reached Knightsbridge Road, Petrie had concluded his disquisition on retail’s problems and moved on to the challenges of cleaning fur.
“Blood is the worst, Mister Quain, as I just explained to Miss Allingham. Still, her sister-in-law was lucky. The stains marked the inside of the pelt but didn’t damage the sable.
We didn’t realize the blotches were blood until we sponged the inside, and it came away pink.
” He lowered his voice. “The muff was a Christmas present from her late husband, and thus quite—”
“What’s that, Mister Petrie? You returned a bloodstained muff to Mrs. Allingham?”
“Why, yes. She asked us to replace the lining as she’d torn it badly.” He tut-tutted. “I don’t know why Mrs. Allingham removed it herself. We would have done that for her. The lady must have had a sizable gash on her hand to produce those bloodstains.”
Will’s mind raced. When Mary had asked who would want to kill Charles and Margot Miller, it had flashed into his mind. The wronged wife.
Will pounded on the carriage roof until the coachman pulled up.
“I must let you out here, Mister Petrie. I’m sorry.” The startled little man gaped from the curb as Will shouted to the driver, “Take me back to Blenheim Lodge. Quick as you can!”
* * *
“Read this.” Julia opened Dr. Scott’s casebook on Inspector Tennant’s desk and pointed to an entry from March 14.
Sergeant O’Malley leaned over and read. Louisa Allingham was here about her headaches and rashes.
Gave her laudanum for her pain and a tube of mercury salve (unlabeled, of course) for her skin.
The dear girl made a gift of a bottle of Royal Lochnagar, knowing it to be a favorite of mine and her late father’s.
“Louisa Allingham? You’re saying Louisa Allingham poisoned Doctor Scott’s whiskey before giving him the bottle as a gift?”
“It doesn’t surprise me,” Tennant said from the door. “Julia, will you accompany us to Kensington? I have a hackney waiting downstairs. I’ll explain in the cab.”
Julia grabbed her medical bag and the casebook and followed Tennant and O’Malley down the stairs and out the door. Tennant gave the cabbie the Allinghams’ address.
“I spoke to her jeweler this morning,” the inspector said as they drove off.
“Louisa lied. She wasn’t at his shop on the day Margot Miller was murdered.
He hasn’t seen her in over a year. Then I made the rounds of all the chemists along Kensington and Knightsbridge roads.
Finally, I found the one where she’d signed the poisons register as Mrs. Alice Upton. Her middle and maiden names.”
O’Malley said, “Signed for strychnine?”
“No. For arsenic, a week before Charles’s death.”