The Angel Read online

  ‘Is there a problem?’ Batchelor asked, realizing as he spoke that perhaps the question was more than a little redundant.

  ‘Well,’ the fashionable gent looked over his shoulder to where the secretary sat alone with her grief, ‘we are known for being a little less formal than some other houses, but this is unusual, even for Chapman and Hall.’ He smiled at them. ‘I’m Trollope, by the way. Henry Trollope, one of the partners here. Miss Jones,’ and he waved an arm, ‘is under the impression that Frederic Chapman, the other partner still living is … well, not to put too fine a point on it, no longer living. The door to his office is locked, she says she can smell blood and that Mr Frederic is never late. Only one of those facts is correct and I must say that I cannot comprehend for the life of me why we suddenly need to start locking doors in premises where even the stamp money only ever comes to a few shillings. However, Mr Frederic demanded it and so it had to be.’

  ‘Where is the key?’ Grand thought it was a reasonable question.

  ‘This is another of Miss Jones’s cause for alarm,’ Trollope said. ‘It should be in her desk drawer, but it is missing.’

  ‘Is her desk locked, as a rule?’ Batchelor asked.

  ‘No … I say, chaps, you don’t mind my asking who the Hell you are, do you? Only, today is proving a little trying and it isn’t even ten o’clock yet.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Batchelor fished out a card and handed it over. ‘We hadn’t intended to pay you a visit, but we heard the noise.’

  ‘I should think they heard it in Whitehall. She’s got a good pair of lungs on her, Em, I’ll give her that much. May I introduce you?’ He walked up to the woman and bent from the waist. ‘Em,’ he said, speaking clearly and slowly as if to a child. ‘Em. These nice gentlemen are detectives. Look,’ he pointed. ‘Mr Grand and Mr Batchelor. Don’t they look nice? Hmm? Now, if you get up, Em, away from the door, either Mr Grand or Mr Batchelor – or for all I know both of them together – will open the door and then we can show you that Mr Frederic isn’t in there. Now! How does that sound? Hmm?’

  The woman stayed crouched in her doorway, looking with frantic eyes at each of the three men in turn. Whichever one of them it was, it was not possible to tell, but she saw something in one of their faces which she could trust and she slowly scrambled to her feet and edged along the wall, away from the door. Grand reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet of trusty lock-picks. This was something else of which Richard Tanner would disapprove, he felt sure, along with his Colt .32, but he felt that his reputation as an enquiry agent rested on his ability to undo this door, right here, right now. He had had lessons from Fingers O’Flaherty, the famous safe-cracker, lately released from a stretch in the Scrubs and who owed Grand a favour, but he had never had a chance to put his new skills to the test. He bent down to the lock and looked through. As he had always suspected when reading fiction, when you look through a keyhole, the most you see is a small amount of the inside of a door. He thought that perhaps he could also see a small chink of light, such as would be coming in through the next frosted window.

  ‘Sniff,’ Miss Jones hissed, leaning forward to poke Grand in the shoulder. ‘Sniff. You’ll smell blood if you do.’

  Grand obliged and could only smell recently drilled wood and oiled lock wards. He looked at her with a comforting smile and chose a pick, which he inserted into the lock. Remembering his lesson with Fingers, he manipulated the pick around, keeping the sections of the lock out of the way with more picks, introduced one by one. After only a moment or two, and to his immense surprise, the lock clicked and, when he turned the doorknob, the door swung open, displaying the room for all to see.

  Miss Jones batted Grand aside and was in there first. For those who didn’t get a clear view – all of the editors had now surged into the room – there was a clue to the contents of the leather chair in front of the swept and cold fireplace. The scream seemed to bypass their ears and hit them right in the brain, like an icicle falling in winter.

  Trollope took her by the arms and spun her round and, before anyone could stop him, he dealt her an uppercut that had her unconscious instantly. He handed her inert form to a sub-editor.

  ‘Lay her down somewhere, someone,’ he muttered. ‘I really can’t stand this screaming another minute.’ He turned into the room. ‘God strewth!’ he said, and went white. ‘She was right.’ He beckoned Grand and Batchelor into the room.

  The three men looked into the room towards the fireplace, some innate sense keeping them at bay. An arm hung limply down, the knuckles of the hand grazing the floor. Congealed blood made a pool around the fingers and had soaked into the carpet, obscuring its rather ornate pattern and creating an obscene mirror of gore. A leg stuck out at a rakish angle and a head lolled on a shoulder. Any one of the parts of the puzzle would have been enough to show that the man was dead. And yes, there was a metallic smell of recent death in the room; in that respect, Miss Jones had been quite right. But, in another, quite wrong.

  ‘What the devil’s going on here?’ a voice demanded to know. ‘Why is Miss Jones lying across her desk? Why is my office door open against my explicit instructions?’ Frederic Chapman had arrived and was not in the mood to be messed about. He barged through the little knot of men in his doorway and strode into the room. He looked at the man in the chair and turned to stare at Trollope, Grand and Batchelor. ‘And who in blazes has crushed Gabriel Verdon’s skull?’ And, with a small groan and an elegant fold at the knees, Frederic Chapman fainted dead away.

  Grand and Batchelor stayed around the offices of Chapman and Hall for as long as they could without exciting comment. Miss Jones had revived for long enough to look through the doorway and see Young Mr Frederic prone on the floor. Her second collapse was more permanent and she had been carted away to Charing Cross Hospital in Agar Street. Frederic Chapman had also recovered and had immediately taken charge, demanding police and explanations in any order they liked to arrive. Henry Trollope, explaining to his partner, turned to introduce Grand and Batchelor, but they had gone. A gruesome murder like this, of a prominent member of a famous publishing house, would attract the instant attention of Scotland Yard, and so it was inevitable that Dolly Williamson would be the police who arrived and sufficient unto the day was that evil; they could always go back later and poke around, should the latest death prove to have any bearing on the cases currently in hand. They both had a feeling that being banged up in a cell by an irate Williamson wouldn’t help their aches and pains any, so they turned for home and made a good pace along the Strand, back to Mrs Rackstraw and safety. Before they got home, Grand put out a restraining hand.

  ‘James,’ he said, ‘it has just occurred to me that Miss Jones may be able to help us. Should I follow her to the hospital, do you think?’

  ‘Do you really think she knows anything?’ Batchelor was doubtful. The woman had looked as mad as a hat-stand as far as he could tell.

  ‘It’s hard to say,’ Grand said, ‘but I got the impression that she has a responsible position in Chapman and Hall, when she isn’t delirious, of course. Perhaps if I visit her now, when her guard is down, she may be able to tell me a few titbits. Gossip, you know.’

  ‘I suppose …’

  ‘I’ll take her some flowers.’ Grand stopped by the old woman who sat on the corner, selling wild blooms from a battered bucket at her feet. ‘Cornflowers, look. She’ll like that.’ He gave the woman a coin.

  ‘Thank you, guv’nor. You’ve got a lucky face.’ The old crone didn’t look up; had she done so she would have had to reword her thanks, as Grand’s black eye was developing nicely.

  ‘You may be right,’ Batchelor said. His back didn’t take to standing on street corners at the moment, and he knew of old when Grand got one of his bright ideas, it was easier by far to let him go along with his hunch. ‘I won’t go out anywhere until you get home. We need to talk things through, see where this case is taking us. It may be that we will have to tell George Sala that we have hit a brick wal
l.’

  ‘Admit defeat? Never!’ and, brandishing his cornflowers, Grand set off along the Strand in the opposite direction, albeit with a slight list to starboard.

  Batchelor watched him go. He hoped Mrs Rackstraw wasn’t going to be too angry that he had let him wander off on his own; he walked back towards home, already composing a number of excuses, ready against the day. Mrs Rackstraw was not angry about Batchelor having mislaid Grand, but she was rather riled at having been treated like a skivvy – as she put it – by another nob knocking on the door when she was in the middle of her pastry. She’d sent him round to the office and no mistake; he didn’t look very reputable in her experienced opinion and so she had got him out of the house, sharpish. Batchelor had noticed a rather irate-looking gent as he passed by on his way along, and turned on his heel on the step and hot-footed it back. Just because they were currently investigating two cases, had been beaten practically to a pulp and had Scotland Yard on their tails, didn’t mean that they could turn work down.

  The man waiting for Batchelor outside 41 The Strand looked pale and drawn. He had tight curls and a cherubic face but the eyes burned with an inner fury and it was clear that he didn’t like being kept waiting.

  ‘Are you Grand?’ he asked, ‘and whatever happened to your face?’

  ‘No, I’m Batchelor,’ Batchelor told him, ‘and please, don’t ask.’

  ‘I was hoping for the senior man.’

  Batchelor fumed inwardly. It had been his idea originally to set up in the enquiry agency business, and in his mind’s eye the signboard was to read ‘Batchelor and Grand’. Still, it was too late now. ‘We have no senior men,’ he said. ‘Grand and I are equals.’

  ‘Lovely,’ the man said. ‘You’ll have to do, then.’

  ‘Come in, Mr … er …’

  ‘Boulton,’ the man said, and waited while Batchelor unlocked the street door. The sun had not come around to their side of the road yet and only the steeple of St Clement Danes was gilded by it, a promise of heat still to come. Soon enough it would creep down the walls of the publishers’ and the counting houses, flash and dazzle off the harness of the cab horses and the drays, drive the window shoppers into the cool of premises to be pounced on by salespersons who gave daily thanks for the weather.

  Batchelor led the way along the corridor and up to the half-floor back. The odd little clocksmith who shared the building was not in yet, and no one had picked up his mail for days.

  ‘Would you like some tea?’ Batchelor asked, hauling open the curtains to let the day in. ‘I have a spirit kettle here somewhere …’

  ‘Thank you, no,’ Boulton said with a shudder, and whipped a hip flask from his pocket before sitting down. He took a swig and a deep breath, as if to compose himself. ‘I won’t mince words,’ he said. ‘I know that Artie came to see you recently.’

  ‘Artie?’ Batchelor looked suitably vague.

  ‘Come, come, Mr Batchelor. Coyness won’t get us very far now, will it? Arthur Clinton.’ Boulton had met people like Batchelor before. Enquiry agents spied on people. They listened at doorways. Peeped through keyholes. They collected soiled bedsheets to prove infidelity. And they were all impressed by money, so Boulton added, ‘Lord.’

  ‘I’m terribly sorry, Mr Boulton,’ Batchelor said, ‘but I cannot divulge …’

  ‘For God’s sake, man!’ Boulton shouted, taking another swig from his flask. ‘We’ll get nowhere if you shilly-shally like this. Artie was a friend of mine – a very dear friend – and somebody killed him.’

  Batchelor had been hunting vaguely for the kettle, but now he stopped and sat down opposite Boulton. ‘They did?’ he said.

  Boulton took several deep breaths to control himself.

  ‘I heard … scarlet fever.’ Batchelor followed the established line.

  ‘If Artie Clinton died of scarlet fever, I’m a Turk’s arse. He was murdered, Mr Batchelor. “By persons unknown”, I believe is the phrase.’

  ‘It generally is,’ Batchelor said. ‘Unless of course you have a known person in mind.’

  ‘I believe I have.’ Boulton crossed one elegant leg over the other. ‘But first, I need to know what Artie came to see you about.’

  ‘Mr Boulton,’ Batchelor spread his arms. ‘I thought I made it clear …’

  ‘Artie is dead, Mr Batchelor,’ Boulton said loudly. ‘Client confidentiality flies out of the window with his soul … oh, that’s rather good, isn’t it? Poetic. All right, let me help you. In his conversation with you, did he mention Ernest? And Frederick? John? Hugh?’

  ‘Er … he may have done,’ Batchelor said, regretting again that he had made no notes of Arthur Clinton’s visit.

  ‘I am Ernest,’ Boulton said. ‘So, you see, I know what Artie knew.’

  ‘The Strand Theatre,’ Batchelor nodded as the details flooded back. ‘The private box. The conspiracy and inciting of persons to commit an unnatural offence.’

  ‘Don’t get me started,’ Boulton’s eyes flashed fire. ‘Who decides what’s an unnatural offence, eh? You? Me? The Lord Bloody Chancellor?’

  ‘Well, I was under the impression it was the joint wisdom of the Houses of Commons and Lords,’ Batchelor said. ‘But I could be wrong.’

  ‘I was subjected to the roughest of handling,’ Boulton bridled at the memory of it. ‘That police surgeon had no idea how such things are done. I couldn’t sit down for a week. And Fanny …’

  ‘Fanny?’

  ‘Funnily,’ Boulton corrected him. ‘I said “Funnily”. I was about to say, funnily enough, I found I could stand it. Worked through the pain.’

  ‘What is it you do, Mr Boulton?’

  Boulton looked a little outraged. ‘I am an actor.’

  ‘Ah. Would I have seen you in anything?’

  An odd smile flitted across the man’s face. ‘I have no idea,’ he said. ‘But we have more pressing matters now, Mr Batchelor.’

  ‘Indeed we do,’ Batchelor agreed. ‘I have to say, Mr Boulton, that, if you suspect foul play, you should go to the police. Scotland Yard.’

  ‘Hah!’ Boulton roared.

  Batchelor remembered the gist of Arthur Clinton’s tale of woe. The police were clearly not Ernest Boulton’s best friends. ‘Ah, no, perhaps not, then.’

  ‘Not indeed,’ Boulton said. ‘But not for the reason you’re thinking. You asked a moment ago if I had a “known person” in mind for Artie’s murder. I have.’ Boulton paused for effect, the actor in him coming to the fore. ‘His name is Adolphus Williamson and he is a chief inspector at Scotland Yard.’

  Matthew Grand didn’t exactly chase the cart which ferried Miss Jones, still twitching and screaming every once in a while, to Charing Cross Hospital, but he wasn’t far behind. She was not hard to locate; the nurses had seen all sorts, but not all that many women in such a state of exhausted hysteria. He spoke to a doctor in the corridor outside the ward and didn’t bother to disabuse him when he assumed he was the patient’s son.

  ‘Does your mother have these turns often?’ the doctor asked.

  Grand told the truth. ‘No, sir, my mother enjoys excellent health as a rule.’ This was quite literally true. He had seen his mother remove all manner of critters from the larder in his time, although even she had called the outside help when a bear had got into their mountain retreat that time. As for Miss Jones’s general health, he had no clue.

  ‘She seems a little confused,’ the doctor said, a little confused himself by Grand’s clearly American accent. It wasn’t often that parent and child were so unlike each other, either. But the science of genetics could be a strange bedfellow. ‘She keeps saying someone called young Mr Frederic is dead but he had someone else’s legs.’

  ‘Yes, I can explain that,’ Grand said, hopefully. ‘You see, she saw someone who had been beaten to death, in the office of … young Mr Frederic. It wasn’t him, though, so she … well, rather than accept it wasn’t him, she seems to have assumed that it was someone else’s legs he had on …’ He looked up at the
doctor, aware he sounded as mad as the secretary. ‘Look, doc, it’s a police matter. I’m just worried about my dear old maw.’ Grand had found in his years in London that a hick American accent could take him a long way.

  ‘You can go and see her for a while,’ the doctor said, pulling out his watch from a waistcoat pocket. ‘I was in surgery when she was brought in. I must get back. Legs don’t amputate themselves, you know! Good luck with Mother. If she doesn’t improve overnight, we’ll have her in Colney Hatch as soon as winking. Goodbye.’

  Grand found himself thinking that would be handy. He could visit his dear old maw and his dear old ex-housekeeper at the same time and save a journey. Then he reminded himself that his dear old maw was terrifying ladies’ soirees back in Boston, pushed open the door to the ward and went in.

  Forty pairs of eyes raked him as he walked down the ward, looking for Miss Jones. She wasn’t hard to spot, being strapped to the bed by leather bindings and still thrashing her head from side to side. ‘Mr Frederic,’ she muttered. Then, ‘Legs!’ she would shriek. Two nurses were tucking her in under the covers so tightly that the straps were almost redundant, but he was glad of them all the same.

  ‘Hello,’ he said to the nearest nurse’s back. ‘The doctor said I could visit with … my dear old maw.’

  The woman spun round. She had a face very much like a currant bun, not helped by the ludicrous starched bonnet above it. Her eyes were kindly, though, and she had Grand summed up in a moment as someone who would be able to pay for as many extras as they could put on his mother’s bill. ‘It isn’t visiting time,’ she pointed out.

  ‘No. But she has had a nasty shock and I wanted to see if she was all right.’ He lowered his voice. ‘It’s a police matter. I need to know if she can be interviewed later. You know how it is … stressful for the poor old soul.’

  The nurses’ eyes widened. The one on the further side of the bed mouthed, ‘Police?’