Sleight Of Hand

Nothing in this case was as it first appeared. Was Inspector Brown facing a dead end?

Val Bonsall’s intriguing short story set in Victorian times welcomes you to our latest Special.

THE street urchins had twisted and tied some dirty old rags tightly to make themselves a ball. Normally, Victoria would have felt sorry for them, having to go to such lengths for the simplest game.

But for the moment she was concerned with manoeuvring Inspector Brown’s wheelchair out of their way as, laughing and pushing, they chased about after their makeshift plaything.

And this going on inside the police station!

She made another quick side-step, this time to avoid Sergeant Travis, who was chasing after the children and issuing threats.

But it was when the inspector intervened that they finally went hurrying back outside on to the street.

Victoria smiled. He, of course, was quite unable to run after them and box their ears. And yet he was the one that they’d obeyed.

Despite the injury that had robbed him of his mobility and necessitated her employment as his nurse in order for him to continue his work, Brown still commanded great authority.

“Sorry about that, sir,”

Travis said. “They all came rushing in, just before your arrival.

“It’ll be them from the streets round the market, most likely. Shall I send someone after them?”

“No, leave them,” Brown replied.

He smiled.

“It pleased me to hear them laughing. There isn’t much to give them amusement in their poor lives.

“Assuming, of course,” he added, “they haven’t stolen anything. We have problems enough without urchins running round brandishing truncheons!”

A search was made of the station. Nothing was missing.

Brown had been on leave for a couple of days. Victoria took him to his office, where Travis soon joined them to familiarise him with all that had happened during his absence.

“And,” the sergeant concluded, eyes sparkling with the look of someone who’d kept the best to last, “we’ve a new witness come forward with testimony to help us against our friend, Mr Worthy!”

“Never was a man more wrongly named, Vicky,” Brown had said when Victoria first heard Worthy mentioned.

“He’s a criminal of the highest – or should I say, lowest? – order.”

They’d been trying to convict him for some time.

Now, at last, they had him locked up awaiting trial, but Brown had warned them all not to count their chickens before they were hatched.

Worthy had a clever lawyer, one Mr Best.

He was more appropriately named than his client, since he was nothing short of brilliant at presenting the felons for whom he acted as the unfortunate victims of a witch hunt.

“Our witness has been away in the country and only heard about what happened on her return,” Travis continued. “A very pleasant woman I found her to be.”

“Her name?” Brown asked.

“Miss Fuller. On the night we found the two bodies in the river, she’d stepped out of her carriage to admire the moon.”

He paused a moment, smiling.

“She’s that sort of person, sir. Artistic, you might say. Anyway, she saw something as will help us get Worthy, no doubt about it.”

“You’ll want to speak with her yourself now you’re back,” the sergeant continued, “but I took a statement meanwhile. I’ll go and get it now.”

A new witness was a big breakthrough. Brown and Victoria shared Travis’s excitement and were happily anticipating their next steps until Travis returned, empty-handed.

Though normally a calm man, he looked to be truly in a state of distress.

“It’s gone!” he exclaimed. “The statement has gone!”

****

“Them kids,” Travis said once they’d finally calmed him down. “I bet it was them that took it.”

“I am thinking that way, too,” Brown agreed. “The children, acting on behalf of someone else. Someone who wants Worthy acquitted.”

“I’ll get Baker and Carr off to the market to see if they can spot them and round them up,” Travis said.

Brown nodded, but didn’t seem hopeful about the outcome.

Victoria wasn’t, either. The expression “looking for a needle in a haystack” popped into her head.

“Meanwhile,” Brown resumed, “from what you have said, Miss Fuller sounds to be local. Do you recall her address?”

Some of the sparkle returned to Travis’s eyes.

“I do! She lives on the square. Do you know the house where you turn off to the park?”

Brown nodded again.

“We will go and see her now and take from her a new statement.”

Victoria was already on her feet and positioning herself behind Brown’s wheelchair.

The contrast within the district they policed still fascinated her.

To one side of them – the side to which they were now headed – the square boasted houses as grand as you’d find anywhere.

To the other, it was crowded damp alleys and slums around the marketplace. Poultry for sale, dead and alive. Old furniture, old clothes. Ointments and potions.

Girls with baskets of flowers, shoe-black boys with their boxes of brushes. People everywhere.

Manoeuvring the inspector’s chair along the cobbles, Victoria knew from experience, was no easy matter.

It took no time, though, on the square’s wide and level pavements, to reach Miss Fuller’s home.

“An enviable residence,” Brown remarked, “though perhaps not the very finest hereabouts.”

“I’ll wager it will soon be the cleanest,” Victoria replied with a smile.

All the windows were open and through them could be heard the sound of strenuous sweeping.

Outside a door at the side, a maid was beating carpets and laughing with someone out of sight.

Another maid, a young girl, was at the main door, vigorously cleaning the brass knocker, singing as she worked.

Victoria remembered Travis, famously hard to impress, describing Miss Fuller as “very pleasant”.

She suspected it was a good household in which to be employed and was looking forward to meeting the family. Miss Fuller, according to Travis, lived with her parents.

“I will go now and tell her of your presence, sir,” the maid said to Brown.

She returned minutes later.

“I am sorry, sir, she seems to be sleeping. She did say she was tired upon returning from her trip away –”

“She isn’t sleeping,” an older maid interrupted, appearing in the doorway. “I think . . .”

****

“She’s dead.” Victoria confirmed the older maid’s fears.

Both of the women had followed Brown and Victoria into the twilight of a room to the back of the house, where the heavy curtains were pulled nearly closed and Miss Fuller’s body was spread on a chaise longue.

They wailed their grief and clung to each other while Victoria helped Brown assess the scene.

A small plain bottle was on the floor.

She picked it up, sniffed it, then handed it to Brown, catching his eye as she did so.

He also sniffed, then returned her look.

They were increasingly able to do that, Victoria reflected. To communicate without words.

Deciding that Brown didn’t yet wish to speak openly in front of the staff, she suggested to the maids that they prepare them a pot of tea.

She was glad she had, because one of them was about to pick up a sheet of paper from the floor.

Victoria beat her to it, but didn’t read it until she and Brown were alone, even though she was pretty certain what it would be – not the detail, perhaps, but in general terms.

I was untrue to Jerome whilst I was away.

I cannot now live with that. Pray forgive me.

The short note was written in a messy, wobbly hand.

Perhaps as death approached, Victoria wondered. Might there have been more had time allowed?

She was still wondering when Brown spoke.

“Can you open the curtains, Vicky? Let some light in.”

She thought at first he was asking to try to lessen the grim mood of the room, though she suspected it would take more than the watery sunshine to do that, considering what had happened here.

But then he spoke again. “Can you move me closer to her? Is that bruising on her arms and neck?”

Victoria bent closer to the body, too.

“It is. New bruising, I’d say. And there’s some on her face, by her mouth, as though her mouth had been forced open.”

She turned back to Brown.

“For the poison perhaps to be forcibly poured in,” he said. “I fear we are not looking at suicide, sad enough though that would be, but at murder!”

They went to the kitchen where, as requested, a pot of tea awaited them.

The person called Jerome mentioned in the note, they learned from the staff, was Miss Fuller’s betrothed.

“I was untrue to Jerome whilst I was away”

“Or soon to be,” a woman who introduced herself as the housekeeper explained. “There is – was – to be a celebration here on Saturday.”

“When did anyone last see Miss Fuller?” Brown asked. “By which I mean up and about?”

“I saw her saying goodbye to her father when he set off this morning,” the younger maid offered.

“The mistress – her mother – went at the same time for a dress fitting.”

“How did Miss Fuller seem on her return from her stay in the country?” Victoria asked.

“Excited and happy, as she would be,” the housekeeper replied, sounding as though Victoria’s question was the silliest she had ever heard.

All the other staff nodded their agreement.

They took from the housekeeper the address of Jerome’s workplace.

“I do not think speaking to him is our first priority,” Brown said when, after more questions, they left the house.

This was what Victoria expected.

He was thinking that whoever killed Miss Fuller had done so to prevent her making a fresh statement to replace the one that had been stolen.

“Her death’s connected to the testimony she had provided against

Worthy rather than to anything, or anyone, in her personal life,” Brown commented as they hastened back to the station.

****

“Of course it could not be Worthy himself who killed her,” Travis said when they told him. “He’s locked up. But there will be people acting for him.”

“They would have had no problem getting to Miss Fuller,” Victoria reasoned.

“The place was having a thorough clean in readiness for her betrothal celebration,” she added. “Doors and windows were open.”

“Worthy’s associates,” Brown began. “Do we know who they are?”

Travis shook his head. “But if we can find out who paid them kids to come in and steal the statement, that would help us trace them.”

“I’ve been wondering about that,” Victoria said. “I don’t think the children stole the statement.”

“But –” Travis started to protest.

Brown waved his hand, signalling to him to let Victoria finish.

“How would they know what to take?” she continued. “It’s not likely many of them could read, for a start. How would they even know where it was kept?”

She paused, then resumed, looking at Travis.

“I’m sure you’re right that the children are involved in, and indeed central to, what has happened. But I think they were sent in to create a diversion while someone else actually stole it.”

“Do you recall anyone else coming in along with the children?” Brown asked Travis.

Travis thought awhile, then sighed.

“No, sir. And I was watching the door best I could for more of them.”

“We came in when it was all going on,” Brown said, “and I have to say that, as we approached, I did not see anyone.”

“No.” Although it was her idea they were considering, Victoria had to admit that she hadn’t, either.

Unless . . .

“Perhaps,” she said, “the thief was already inside, awaiting the children’s diversion.”

“Same applies,” Travis replied. “I don’t recall anyone.

“But Baker and Carr were present, too,” he added, already making for the door. “I’ll see what they say.”

He returned promptly. “Neither of them are aware of anyone, either.”

“What about Greaves?” Victoria asked. “Did he see anyone?”

“Greaves was gone by then,” Travis replied, “having worked all the night.”

“No, I definitely saw him,” Victoria insisted, “helping shoo them out.”

Travis again disappeared from the room.

“Yes, miss,” he said on his return. “Baker says Greaves was still here, cleaning himself up. He’d had to stop a cock fight, he said.

“He’s gone now, but will be back on duty this evening.”

After Travis had left, Brown spoke.

“I’m pleased you noticed Greaves. No offence intended to Baker or Carr, but Greaves is brighter.

“Like you, Vicky, he notices things. I am hopeful he will have something to add.”

The rest of the day was spent going over the case against Worthy.

The irony, of course, was that without Miss Fuller as a witness, they were in a significantly weaker position to achieve justice for her.

So neither was in good spirits and, as the sun started to sink, an additional restlessness came over Victoria, which she put down to the frustration of waiting around to speak to Greaves.

“I believe,” she said to Brown, “the address where Greaves lodges is on our route. Shall we call and see him on our way home?”

Victoria lodged with Brown and his mother, and increasingly did think of the comfortable house as “home”.

****

Victoria had left the inspector’s chair in the hallway as she’d climbed up the narrow stairs to the room Greaves rented.

He was not the only one to hear her screams from the floor above, and some of the other lodgers – strong-looking men working on the new railway line – quickly hoisted the inspector up to her.

“He’s hanged himself!” one of the men cried, backing away from Greaves’s dangling body.

“So it appears,” Brown said carefully.

Victoria knew that he was thinking of Miss Fuller.

Had someone else now been murdered by Worthy’s associates?

Had they feared that Greaves had seen Miss Fuller’s statement and would back up Travis?

When lamps were provided, however, it was clear that this was indeed death by his own hand.

And this was even before they saw the letter Greaves had addressed to the inspector.

I was proud to become a police officer, sir, and I wanted you, who has given me such encouragement, to be proud of me. But there was a greed in me that wouldn’t lie quiet.

I saw they were watching for Miss Fuller’s return and reasoned it was from worry she might present herself as a witness.

I made myself known to them and agreed for payment to steal her testimony, under cover of the urchins coming into the station.

I did not, and I pray you believe me, sir, have any inkling of their intention to kill Miss Fuller.

But I cannot dismiss my share of responsibility and have no doubt you would have uncovered my guilt.

I saw it in your nurse’s face when she saw me earlier. So rather than the hangman’s noose, I have devised my own.

I list below details that I hope will be useful in apprehending Miss Fuller’s murderer.

Brown stopped reading. “It is his handwriting, Vicky,” he said quietly, passing the note to her. He half smiled.

“It seems he was as anxious about you discovering the truth as he was that I should.”

****

“A sad day, then, but a successful one,” Brown said when, at last, they were seated in the room in his mother’s house she called “the library”.

Victoria nodded.

“We are well placed to convict not just Worthy, but Miss Fuller’s murderer, too.

“A successful day, yes, but a sad one.”

“Indeed.” Brown sighed. “The death of Greaves, who at the start showed such promise. Of Miss Fuller, who was killed simply because she was a good citizen.”

“I am pleased you spoke to her fiancé,” Victoria said, “and told him not to give any credence to the note found at her side.”

Brown smiled.

“He said he would never have believed she had been untrue to him anyway. That he trusted her absolutely.

“Now, how many people can say that about someone?”

Victoria frowned.

“I don’t know, but maybe more than you seem to be thinking. But perhaps the job you do – we do – where we see not always the best of human nature, inclines us towards such a view.

“Though in general what you say is true,” she continued, suddenly feeling awkward.

“You are, indeed, a lucky person if you have someone you trust entirely.”

She couldn’t be sure, what with the wind whistling in the chimney, but as she moved him closer to the fire, did she hear him say that he, then, was a very lucky man?

Unsure as she was, she thought it best not to reply.

Not out loud, anyway.

The End.