Ann Granger (4 page)

The supporting piers of the jetty revealed by the low tide were, like the dock wall, smothered in curtains of black seaweed dotted with barnacles. The smell here was much stronger and not pleasant. There was a strong suggestion of sewage from the sea slapping at the supports. Rubbish of all kinds floated on it and collected around the piers.

So many passengers had already boarded I began to be afraid there would not be room for us and hastened to follow the crowd. Our baggage, in any case, was already aboard. I could see Albert stacking it tidily on the foredeck, which currently faced into the seawall. The ramp bounced and shook and I grasped at a nearby railing to steady myself. Eager would-be passengers behind me thrust me forward again. Nor were things any better at the bottom. Here a narrow gangway bridged the gap between the stone platform at the base of the ramp and the lurching ferry. At the jetty end of the gangplank a small boy relieved passengers of their tickets. They then launched themselves across the divide to arrive, shrieking and giggling, higgledy-piggledy on deck. I grasped my skirts and took an athletic leap, landing unsteadily on the first ship of any kind I’d been on in my life.

‘Sit here, ma’am,’ advised Albert, grabbing my arm and pointing with his free hand to a wooden bench by our baggage. ‘Saloon’s full.’

I sat down quickly before someone else claimed our seat and looked back anxiously for my travelling companion. Dr Lefebre was making his way down the ramp. He held on to his top hat with one hand and in the other I could see the small white paper tickets. On his arrival at the gangplank he held the tickets out to the boy who was so impressed by this well-dressed passenger that he gaped at him for a full two seconds before snatching the tickets. Dr Lefebre arrived, slightly breathless but imperturbable as ever, and took a seat on the wooden bench beside me.

‘Well, Miss Martin. I wonder what other adventures await us before we arrive at Shore House?’

A bell was rung. Albert dragged in the gangplank and closed the metal access panel. The engine roared; the funnel above belched a cloud of white; the paddles began to turn and thrash the water. We pulled away from shore – backwards.

Almost at once, however, we began to describe a semicircle until we faced in the right direction, with the New Forest shore on the far side ahead of us. The doctor and I faced into the breeze and sun. I considered unstrapping my umbrella from my portmanteau to serve as parasol. But with so many people so close at hand, opening it would hardly have been possible.

The paddles made a tremendous racket, drowning out any conversation. The wind was stronger now as we moved out into the middle of the channel. Dr Lefebre produced his white silk handkerchief again and, folding it into a bandage shape, tied it over his top hat and under his chin. On any other it would have look ridiculous. On him, it simply looked practical. Or so it seemed to me. But others saw it differently. Opposite us two countrywomen were watching him with something akin to horror. One of them leant towards her friend and, following the line of her own plump chin with a forefinger, mouthed the words ‘jaw tied up like a corpse!’

It took some half an hour to get us across and I thoroughly enjoyed my first sea voyage. The channel was busy with small craft. The larger ones, the passenger and mail packets and trade clippers, lay at anchor awaiting high tide. I was sorry when the paddles slowed, another bell rang and we began to drift towards our mooring. I was even sorrier when I saw what form it took.

At least, on the Southampton side, there had been a jetty. On the Hythe side I saw only a long gravel spit or hard reaching out across the pungent-smelling mud left by the retreating tide and the shallows, until it reached the channel deep enough to allow the draught of our vessel. On it stood another nautical figure waiting for us. There was nothing for it; we must clamber down somehow on to the uncertain surface and make our way to
terra firma
, laden with our bags. It looked hazardous and I must have let my dismay be seen, because an elderly red-faced countryman standing by me attempted to cheer me up.

‘Tisn’t so bad, ma’am. I never saw anyone fall off but twice, and one of them was full of liquor. See here, my boy will help you with your bags. Obadiah, take the lady’s portmanteau!’

‘We’re obliged to you,’ said Dr Lefebre.

Our informant leaned forward confidentially. ‘We needs an act of parliament, sir.’ He pronounced all the syllables:
parl-i-a-ment.

Even Lefebre looked taken aback. ‘Indeed?’

‘Yes, sir, for us to have a proper pier like they have on the Southampton side. Then the ferry could tie up neat and tidy and we wouldn’t need the hard. But although we’ve been asking for one for years, we must have an act of parliament to allow it. But they have promised we shall have it when the gentlemen in parliament’s got time enough to think about us. We live in hopes, sir.’

Our skipper manoeuvred our doughty little vessel alongside the gravel hard. Albert appeared and wrestled out the gangplank, pushing it through the opened gate to be seized by the man on the hard and wedged into the gravel. The first experienced passengers were already scrambling down it. We followed and somehow got down on to the hard, one by one, bundled down the gangplank by Albert into the arms of the man ashore. He caught us, steadied us and gave us a firm push in the direction of land. I grasped my fluttering skirts in both hands. Wet gravel crunched beneath my feet. Ahead of me tottered a stout woman carrying a wicker basket and behind me came Dr Lefebre uttering encouragement. In this way I stumbled inelegantly across the hard and with relief finally set foot on the stone quay.

Travellers from the Forest side to Southampton had been waiting their turn there. As soon as the hard was clear of incoming traffic, they began busily streaming down it with the intention of boarding our vessel. Soon she would steam away and become a dwindling black smudge until lost to sight. It suddenly struck me that although people of all sorts surrounded me, I’d been landed like poor Robinson Crusoe on an alien shore. I knew no one here, other than my curious travelling companion.

Our bags were deposited and Dr Lefebre presented Obadiah with sixpence. His father protested it wasn’t necessary, but Obadiah had other ideas, seized the coin and made off with it.

Dr Lefebre untied the silk bandage from his hat, folded it neatly and tucked it away in his pocket.

‘You are in good spirits, Miss Martin?’

‘Oh, yes!’ I replied breathlessly. I thrust aside my momentary qualms.

‘Well done. Now then, where is our onward conveyance?’

There was to be no going back.

Chapter Three

Inspector Benjamin Ross

OF COURSE I wanted to conduct Lizzie south of the river to Waterloo station myself. I hoped that a last-minute appeal made there, with the reality of the hissing steam engines before her, might change her mind about going into Hampshire. Although, as I well know, once Lizzie’s mind is made up, it would take something really extraordinary to shift it.

As things were, just about the time her train would be pulling out, I was sitting not far from another great London rail terminus, in King’s Cross police station, face to face with an unprepossessing individual by the name of Jonas Watkins. He was a pasty-faced fellow with puffed eyes and a mean little mouth. He was dressed flashily in a suit of loud hound’s-tooth check. I thought he was ill advised to draw attention to his spindly frame. He obviously thought otherwise. Despite lacking all charm, as far as I could see, he was a vain little peacock, repeatedly patting the top of his head where his thinning hair was plastered down with some pungent hair ointment.

‘All right,’ I said to him, ‘don’t waste my time. I can tell you that I’m not in a very good mood today and you’d be unwise to try it.’

‘I’m sure I don’t want to waste anyone’s time,’ said Mr Watkins. ‘I don’t want to waste my own, come to that. What am I doing here? That’s what I want to know.’

What am
I
doing here? I thought with an inner groan. I ought be at Waterloo, dragging Lizzie out of that train compartment if need be.

I dallied briefly with the image presented and set it aside as impractical. Lizzie would be more than capable of putting up spirited resistance to being manhandled and I’d probably end up being arrested myself.

Why on earth must she set off for a place she knew nothing of, and people of whom she knew only what she’d heard from – to my mind – very unreliable sources? At least, when she originally left Derbyshire for London, it was for the home of a relative of sorts. She knew who Mrs Parry was. Even that turned out badly.

‘Well?’ demanded Watkins truculently, taking my momentary inattention for an inability to answer his question.

‘You are here,’ I told him, ‘because of a complaint made to the police by a young woman by the name of Mary Harris. She says she left her at that time sixteen-month-old child in the care of you and your wife.’

‘I don’t know any Mary Harris,’ he returned promptly. ‘I told one of your fellows this already. He came to my house asking. Mrs Watkins was very upset. We’re respectable. We can’t have uniformed constables knocking on the door. Neighbours talk. I know a Mary Fletcher, mind you. She runs the King’s Head pub. She ain’t got no eighteen-month-old child. She’s sixty if she’s a day.’

‘Jonas,’ I said to him gently. ‘I’m a busy man with no time to listen to nonsense.’

He looked alarmed at the quiet tone. He’d have preferred I shouted at him. He was ready for that.

‘I don’t know her,’ he repeated sullenly.

‘Very well, let me refresh your memory. Mary Harris is in service. She’s a parlourmaid. Eighteen months ago, when she was employed as such in Chelsea, she gave birth to a male infant out of wedlock.’

‘There you are, then,’ said Watkins virtuously. ‘You don’t want to go believing anything she’ll tell you.’

‘But I do believe her. Despite being abandoned by the child’s father, Miss Harris was devoted to her baby and, as she couldn’t care for him herself, at first left him with her elderly mother in Kentish Town. Unfortunately, her mother passed away not long after that. Mary had no one else to leave her child with and was unwilling to put him into an orphanage. Then she heard about you and your wife. She was told you ran a business caring for infants who couldn’t be cared for by their own parents. A baby farm, in other words.’

‘Oh, well, we do that,’ Watkins agreed. ‘It’s a lawful, respectable business and what you might call a public-spirited one. We help those in need, Mrs Watkins and I.’

‘So,’ I went on ruthlessly, ‘that unfortunate young woman paid you out of her meagre wages to take care of her child. Unfortunately, she fell sick. She lost her place. She had to live on what little savings she had. She couldn’t pay you the weekly fee for the care of her son and she came to tell you so and ask you to be patient. As soon as she found another place, she’d resume payment and make good the default.’

Watkins sighed. ‘I’ve heard that story before. Not from Mary Harris, or whatever she may be called, because I don’t know any Mary Harris. But I’ve heard it from others. First off, they swear they’ll pay regular. But after a bit, it gets an inconvenience. So they disappear. Don’t visit no more. Don’t pay Mrs Watkins and me. We ain’t a charity. We gotta live and feed all them other kids.’

‘So,’ I asked him, ‘what do you do in such cases?’

‘Take the child to the workhouse,’ he said promptly.

‘But you didn’t take Mary Harris’s child to the workhouse, did you?’

‘Because I – we – never had him!’ cried Watkins triumphantly, jabbing his bony forefinger at me.

‘But Mary Harris
did
turn up again at your front door. She hadn’t been able to find a place in London for quite some time and had to work in a country household. Eventually she did find a place back in London and the first opportunity she had, she set off to see her child and pay you what she owed. You told her you’d taken her child to the workhouse. She went to the workhouse in question and they knew nothing of your handing over a child during the period in which it was supposed to have happened.’

‘Then they’ve lost him,’ snapped Watkins. ‘They’ve got more kids than they know what to do with and they can’t keep track of them all. That’s what’s happened, they’ve lost him!’

‘So now you are saying you did take him there? I thought you had never seen Mary Harris or her child? That’s what you told me just now. Sergeant Morris here is witness to it.’

‘That’s right,’ said Morris lugubriously from the corner.

‘No, no, no, Inspector!’ Watkins leaned across the table and addressed me in wheedling tones. ‘You’ve got it all wrong! When I told you I took the children left on our hands to the workhouse, that was just telling you what we do in such cases. I didn’t mean you to understand I was saying we took Peter there.’

‘Oh? You know his name?’

‘You told me it!’ said Watkins immediately.

‘No, I didn’t. Sergeant?’

‘No, sir,’ said Morris. ‘I’ve been sitting here writing it all down, like you told me to. Every word spoke is here in my notebook!’ He brandished it.

Watkins glowered at it.

‘Mary Harris went to the nearest police station to your house which happened to be here in King’s Cross,’ I went on. ‘She told her story. She was believed. An officer went to your house and when you denied all knowledge of the young woman, he got suspicious at your manner. It was passed to Scotland Yard as a possible murder case.’

‘Murder!’ shrieked Watkins, leaping to his feet and flailing his arms in panic. ‘I never killed the brat!’

Morris rose majestically and placed a hand on the wretched Jonas’s shoulder. ‘Sit down, Mr Watkins, why don’t you?’ he invited.

Watkins glanced at him and decided to comply. ‘I never killed him,’ he said sullenly.

‘You don’t deny he was in your care?’

‘Well, all right, he was. But the girl, the mother, she took off somewhere out of London and we didn’t expect to see her again. It’s not the first time it’s happened to us. People take advantage of our good nature,’ snivelled Watkins. He wiped away a tear which might have been play-acting or, given he had seen an awful vision of the hangman’s noose, might be genuine.