Death at Whitechapel (31 page)

“Good morning, Raeburn,” he said.

Startled, Manfred recognized Lord Charles Sheridan. What the devil was he doing here? Some silly errand for Lady Randolph, no doubt. Damned impolite of him to have barged in without even the courtesy of a knock. But Manfred had learned not to reveal his true feelings in such situations. He snatched the cigarette out of his mouth, stood, and said in a deferential tone, “Good morning, m'lord. I'm afraid you've caught me with my nose to the grindstone.” He paused. “Is there something I may get for you? There's tea, if you like.”

“Thank you, no.” Lord Sheridan took the leather chair opposite, crossed one leg over the other, and balanced his bowler on one knee. “Just give me a moment, if you will.” He took out his pipe and tobacco and set to work in a leisurely manner, filling his pipe.

Still standing, Manfred watched him, increasingly unsure of himself. What did Sheridan want? Why had he come? He could feel the hostility rising within him and the despair that always came with it when he was in the presence of gentlemen like Lord Sheridan, the painful understanding that he was the wrong sort and that no matter how hard he tried, he could never belong. It had been the same way in the regiment, when he and Arthur had passed all the military tests with flying colors, met or surpassed every requirement, only to fail before the highest hurdle of all, the hurdle of social status. That was why Arthur—

Manfred tightened his jaw. No, none of that now. What did this man
want
?

When Sheridan had finished tamping the tobacco, he lit it and then glanced up, as if suddenly remembering Manfred's presence.

“Oh, sorry,” he said. “Do sit down, Raeburn. I want to ask you a few questions.”

Manfred resisted the urge to thumb his nose at this manifestation of arrogance and impoliteness. Still standing, he said, in a markedly cooler tone, “Questions? About what?”

Looking past him, out the window, Sheridan pulled on his pipe. “About Tom Finch.”

Manfred felt his knees suddenly go weak. “Tom... Finch? I don't believe I know...” He sat down, trying to collect himself, muttering the name several times. Then: “Oh, right,” he said, as if he had just remembered. “Tom Finch. He's a photographer, isn't he? When I was over at the
New Review,
he brought some of his work for us to have a look at. Of course, the
New Review
didn't go in for that sort of thing, but I felt he had a certain style—” He knew he was rattling on, and forced himself to stop. “Why do you ask?”

Sheridan did not answer the question. Instead, he uncrossed his legs and put his hat on the floor. Then he took out his wallet and removed two newspaper clippings, placing them in front of him, the edges precisely touching. “Because,” he said, “he is dead.”

Manfred's stomach lurched. “Dead?” He swallowed. He could not read the clippings upside down. but they looked like—He swallowed again, and said, more loudly. “What do you mean, ‘dead'?”

Again, no answer. Again, into the wallet. Without looking up, Sheridan took out two typewritten notes and laid them on either side of the clippings, just touching, just so, as if they were playing cards.

Manfred's eyes were fixed on the notes. “What,” he heard himself asking hollowly, “are... those?”

“They are demand notes received by Lady Randolph in the past few days,” Sheridan replied. He reached into the side pocket of his coat. “Tom Finch was in the unsavory business of photographing people—particularly important people whom he caught
flagrante delicto,
as it were, in the midst of unwise acts. He claimed to have such a photograph of Lord Randolph Churchill, with one of the victims of the Ripper killings—a woman named Mary Kelly. He was using it to blackmail Lady Randolph.” From his pocket, he took out a manilla envelope from which he extracted a photograph, placing it above the notes and clippings.

“Blackmail!” Manfred exclaimed, trying not to look at the photograph. His voice was high and thin, and he heard it as if from a great distance. “Why, I call that shocking! Poor Lady Randolph! Why would anyone do such a—”

“At some point,” Sheridan continued, in his precise, dry voice, “another party learned of the photograph and felt that he could put it to a better use. Finch, however, had already had a change of heart. He wrote to Lady Randolph to tell her that he would no longer annoy her with his demand letters and to offer her the negatives.”

“To offer her—” Manfred heard his voice crack and the words fail.

“Exactly,” Sheridan said. “However, before Finch could make good on his intentions, the other party learned of his plans. They fell out, and Finch got the worst of it. The police found him face-down in his shepherd's pie with a knife between his shoulder blades. His murderer made off with one or more prints of the photograph.”

Someone made a choking noise. It might have been Manfred, but he wasn't listening. He was trying to weigh the likelihood that Sheridan was guessing. The man did not sound at all speculative—but where had he come by his information?

“What the other party did not know, however,” Sheridan went on, “was that the photograph for which he killed Finch was a forgery, and that the negatives used to construct it were hidden in a photographic studio elsewhere on Cleveland Street.”

“A... forgery?” Manfred's words were a whisper, and he scarcely heard them. Involuntarily, his hand had gone across the desk for the photograph. He pulled it back.

Sheridan turned the photo and pushed it toward Manfred. “Exactly. It was a rather clever forgery, you see—clever enough to have deceived Lady Randolph and clever enough to have taken in Finch's killer. However, the negatives have been recovered from Finch's studio, and clearly reveal how he fabricated it.”

“I—I—” Manfred's throat was too dry to continue. He seized his cup and swallowed some tea. “I don't see why you—”

“Why I have come to you?” Sheridan asked. With the tip of his finger, he pushed the two typewritten notes across the desk. “Because these notes were typed on that machine at your elbow.” He paused and added gently, “And since you are the only occupant of this office, it is logical to assume that you typed them. Wouldn't you agree?”

Manfred turned to stare at the typewriter, as if he had never seen it before. “On
this
machine?” Now he was sure that Sheridan was guessing. There was no possible way he could know—

“Yes.” Sheridan took a pencil from the cup on the desk and pointed to a line in one of the notes. “The lowercase o is slightly defective. You can see that it is flat at the bottom.” He paused. “If you cannot make it out, I shall be glad to offer you my hand-lens.”

Manfred found it suddenly very difficult to see the notes on the desk in front of him. He blinked to bring them into focus, but they were still a blur.

Sheridan went on, relentlessly logical. “And if you are inclined to point out that this demonstration proves only that the two notes came from the same machine, consider this.” Out came the wallet again, and a third typed note, the commendatory one Manfred had written to Lady Randolph about Beryl Bardwell's short story. “You can see the same flattened o,” Sheridan said, pointing. “This note has your signature on it.” He nodded toward the typewriter. “And if I'm not mistaken, the paper in the machine at the moment is the very same yellow flimsy you used for the second demand note.”

There was a long silence, and then Manfred heard himself saying: “But anyone could have come into this room and typed those blackmail notes on this machine.” The suggestion sounded thin and unconvincing, even to him.

“But not everyone had a motive,” Sheridan said gravely. He rose and turned, just as the door opened and Churchill strode in, a few paces ahead of a police officer in a blue serge uniform.

Without preamble, Churchill said, “I've come to tell you that I'm awfully sorry for what I did, Raeburn.”

Manfred was struck dumb, and the despair washed through him like a bitter flood. They not only knew that he had killed Finch and tried to blackmail Lady Randolph, but they knew why, and their knowledge robbed him of everything. There was nothing left of his plan for revenge, nothing left of his hopes, nothing left of his future. It was gone. All gone. He half turned toward the window, where the bird with the iridescent feathers had come back to peck at the remaining bits of grain. Such a beautiful bird, Arthur's bird, its feathers sleek and glistening—

Sheridan was looking at Churchill. “I want Raeburn to hear the whole thing, Winston,” he said. “Everything you told me last night.”

Manfred heard Churchill's words through a great roaring in his ears. “Ragging you and your brother was unforgivable of me,” he was saying, “and I shall be haunted by my actions for the rest of my life. I want you to know that I am heartily sorry, Raeburn. I could not know that what I and the others did might lead to your brother's suicide, but if it is of any help to you, I have thought of myself with a deep loathing every day since his death. If only I could go back and undo what we—”

“Stop ‘im!” the officer cried. “'Ee's jumpin'!”

Manfred heard that, too. But he had already swung one leg over the windowsill, and the desk was between the three of them and himself. They could not reach him in time. He cast one last glance at the pigeon as it flew up and away, and then he was over the edge and falling free.

 

 

K
ate knocked at the door of Maude Raeburn's apartments, which occupied the second floor of a brick building in Bayswater—not a fashionable address, but clean and well-kept. Miss Raeburn herself, wearing a loose caftan dyed in dark greens and purples, opened the door.

“Good afternoon, Lady Charles,” she said. She did not seem surprised, nor embarrassed, at the prospect of receiving a visitor in something other than mourning garb.

“I've come to pay my respects,” Kate said, “and to tell you how sorry I am about your brother's death.”

“Thank you,” Miss Raeburn said. “Do come in and have a cup of tea.”

She led the way down a hall hung with framed photographs of herself and other women in walking and cycling costumes, posed before various mountains and lakes and pyramids. The small parlor into which they went was crowded with exotic furnishings and souvenirs of foreign countries: a vase of ostrich feathers, an African mask, a stuffed bird in a glass case, a large pottery urn filled with carved walking sticks. There were several shelves full of smaller pieces of pottery with a variety of glazes, and baskets of all shapes and sizes. The air was filled with the exotic scent of some foreign incense.

“I'll be just a moment,” Miss Raeburn said, and disappeared. Kate sat on a velvet settee in front of the parlor fire, looking around, and after a few moments, Miss Raeburn returned with a black-lacquered tray. She poured tea out of a red porcelain pot decorated with Oriental designs into small cups without handles. Apart from her exotic garb, she looked much as she had the night she and her brother had dined at Sibley House, but was much more subdued and somber. And now that Kate studied her more closely, she realized that the woman was older than she had thought—in her mid-thirties, perhaps. She was certainly several years older than her brother.

“Lady Randolph asked me to convey her condolences,” Kate said, sipping the tea. It had a strange taste but was very pleasant, and the flaky Greek pastries Miss Raeburn offered had a honey-rich flavor. “She wanted to come with me, but under the circumstances—” She hesitated, half-wishing she hadn't begun the sentence.

“I'm sorry for what Mannie did,” Miss Raeburn said, “and for any injury he caused Lady Randolph. But there are two sides to the story, you know. Mannie was wrong, but he acted out of a great injury. Forgive me for speaking bluntly,” she added, setting the tea tray to one side and settling herself in a large rattan chair. Her voice was matter-of-fact, without inflection. “I'm afraid I don't know how to speak of it other than frankly. It's no good brushing it under the rug, is it?”

“I should like to hear the other side of the story,” Kate said. “And perhaps it might help you to speak of it. I understand that you are all alone, now that your brother has died.”

“You
are
kind,” Miss Raeburn said. She gave Kate a sideways glance. “I admire your novels, you know. I particularly enjoyed the one in which the heroine flies around the world in a balloon. You are quite clever. Adventurous, too. You Americans are always adventurous.”

Kate was glad that an answer did not seem required.

“I am something of a writer and adventuress myself,” Miss Raeburn went on, gathering speed. “Travel pieces for magazines and newspapers, chiefly. I also give magic lantern lectures for the benefit of women who secretly wish they could abandon their husbands and children and go jaunting off to other countries in the company of adventuresome women.” She sat for a moment, the firelight glinting in her light hair, and then said, more slowly and in a different, softer tone, “And yes, I am alone now, entirely alone. My mother has been dead for some years, and my father—he was a farmer in Shropshire—died of grief after Arthur's death.”