The Scent of Murder (16 page)

The boys’ yard was next door to the girls’. While the others were whispering, Edie passed the time watching, through the fence, the boys who weren’t old enough to work on the farms have their play time too. They were making the most of their release from their menial indoor tasks (such as cleaning the porters’ shoes) by engaging in a gobbing competition. Grey gobs got a few marks, yellow a few more, and green got more still. If someone spat a green with red streaks, well, they got the most marks of all. Edie didn’t know what the prize was, didn’t want to know — boys were so disgusting.

She’d learned what the boys got up to from her friend Joe, whose path she’d crossed when she’d worked in the poorhouse buttery. He was a dairy hand. There she was, thinking about Joe again — funny how he kept on popping into her mind like that.

One of her duties had been to collect the milk from the milking barn. As he’d poured frothing milk into her pails, they’d sneaked some conversation. There was a lot to admire about Joe: he was tall and broad for his age, but ever so kind and gentle with the cows, and any other animal that came his way. Once he even stood up to the head dairyman, who wanted to drown a batch of kittens. Joe had loomed over the runt of a man and made him back down without even raising his fist. He’d said he was going to name one of the kittens after her.

Edie admired his reading skills too; they were so much better than her own. She also liked the way his brow crinkled when he talked seriously. He wanted to become a journalist–explorer like Sir Henry Morton Stanley.

‘Fancy,’ he’d say, ‘Stanley being a workhouse boy, just like me.’

She’d hardly seen Joe since she’d started working at the Hall, but his absence from her life had built him up in her mind into something even more special. Silly, but she couldn’t seem to help it. Thinking about him at night made her forget the aching cold and block out Bessie’s moaning, and helped her to fall asleep. Sometimes she imagined marrying Joe and together setting up a farm of their own, but it was just a fantasy; they had no money and probably would never get any. Her folks had never been married and that had been a huge problem. Though Joe never said anything about it, Edie couldn’t see a boy like him wanting to put up with the likes of her. Joe’s widowed dad was a bank clerk and had only sent his son to the workhouse so he could get some money together — or so he’d said. Edie didn’t have the heart to remind Joe that he’d been in the workhouse four years now, with no word from his dad since he first came. Still, even a dumped bank clerk’s son was above her sort, she reckoned. If you knew your place in this life, you would be rewarded in the next. That was what the Master said — and an important man like him should know, shouldn’t he?

A terrible screaming and caterwauling erupted from the babies’ yard and broke into Edie’s thoughts. She didn’t have to look to know what was happening. The slummocky nurses were taking the babies out, six to a perambulator, for their morning wash. If the babies had messed themselves, they were stripped of their napkins, held under the water pump and sluiced with icy water until they were clean, and blue with cold. Edie had grown up with the sounds of the screaming babies in her ear but never got used to it. Sometimes their screams followed her into her dreams. Even she knew it wasn’t right to treat poor innocent babes that way. No wonder so many of them died.

The bell jangled, rung by Alice Spurge. Edie glared at her. Edie had always wanted the special privilege of ringing the bell, but knew she would never get it. With a sigh, she left her place at the fence and filed back into the classroom with the other girls. They continued to keep their distance as if she had some kind of disease — well, pooh to them.

‘And now, girls, we have a special treat,’ Miss Bernard said as they returned to their desks. ‘Today the Master is going to tell us a story.’

The girls scraped back their chairs and stood to attention as the Master strode in, making the floorboards sway beneath his weight.

‘Good morning, girls.’

‘Good morning, Master,’ they chimed back.

He told them to sit down and make themselves comfortable. Miss Bernard twittered around as if the King had come to call. Then again, the Master
was
king of the workhouse and Edie could tell that all the female staff fancied him. The girls were supposed to feel honoured that he wished to tell them a story.

After the schoolmistress had left the room, he said, ‘Can anyone guess which story I am going to tell you today, girls?’

Some of the girls cradled their heads in their arms, others put their hands over their mouths or ears.

Alice Spurge shot her hand up. ‘“The Witch Hounds”, sir?’ She was a bright one, one of the Master’s favourites. Alice didn’t care what he did to her as long as he gave her a handful of aniseeds afterwards. Edie hated the taste of aniseed; it made her throw up.

‘Yes, indeed, very good. I shall tell you the true tale of the Witch Hounds.’ He paused and fixed his eyes on Edie. ‘And of what happens to little pauper girls who upset their betters.’

The nits again? She’d already taken her walloping; surely that was the end of it. She didn’t dare look at him, because if she did she’d probably stick out her tongue without even meaning to. Sometimes that kind of thing just happened with her and she was always in trouble, either for that or for saying something cheeky. She hung her head and tried to think of good things, like Mrs Plummer’s apple and blackberry cake. Like Joe.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The police orderly room, separated from the front desk of the Uckfield police station by a wooden partition, smelled of chalk and boot-black and reminded Pike of the village schoolroom over which his father had once presided. Instead of colourful pictures tacked to the walls, though, there were wanted posters, maps of the area and warning signs. One of the desks held a Remington portable type-writing machine that no one at the station knew how to use, though that came as no surprise. No one at this station knew how to do much of anything, Pike reflected with resignation as he addressed the two policemen assigned to him.

Constable Weedon had spent most of the briefing doodling on his notebook. Pike had glimpsed an upside-down cartoon of his own face, features exaggerated — the small bump on the bridge of his nose now as deviated as a boxer’s, his eyes hooded like those of a bird of prey. It could have been a lot worse, he supposed, considering how he had forced himself into their investigation and pulled them into line. He’d hardly set off on the right foot with these country policemen.

Sergeant Berry put up his hand, his bulk miniaturising the desk behind which he was sitting, so he looked like a schoolboy who’d been kept down a class. ‘Can you tell us again, sir, how the bullet business is used?’

Pike curbed his irritation. One more go, then. ‘Ballistics,’ he said with a sigh.

Berry stared at him blankly. Constable Weedon had discarded his notebook and was staring out of the window at a young woman pedalling down the back lane on a bicycle.

‘Perhaps an example of how we use the new science will help this time.’ Pike cleared his throat as if to go on and then said nothing, allowing his facial expression to say it all.

Berry elbowed the PC in the ribs.

‘Sorry, sir,’ the young man said, blushing.

Did he have no interest in the case whatsoever? Pike wondered with incredulity. And Berry was barely more enthusiastic. Pike did not expect these rural policemen to understand the science of ballistics, but he did expect them to show some enthusiasm. Murders in Piltdown could hardly be commonplace. He swallowed his irritation and began his narrative.

‘A man named Wheeler was suspected of the violent robbery of a jewellery shop in Eastbourne last year, during which the jeweller was shot and killed. Unfortunately we never found the incriminating weapon, and although we suspected Wheeler we could not make a case of it. Then, earlier this year, we received news of a smuggling ring in Hastings in which Wheeler was thought to be involved. Inspector Phipps, from the Hastings police, infiltrated the ring. He was about to organise a trap when the gang was tipped off and murdered him on the beach. The bullet that killed him was examined by Mr Robert Churchill, the Yard gunsmith, and found to be an exact match to the one that killed the Eastbourne jeweller. We arrested Wheeler, found the gun in his possession, retrieved a bullet shot from it by him during his arrest and have been able to charge him with both the jeweller’s and Inspector Phipps’s murders — as well as with the running of a smuggling ring.’

Pike turned and added some markings to a sketch of the bullet he had drawn earlier on the blackboard. ‘You see, the gun he used left its pattern of marks on the bullet like this. These marks are unique; no other gun can make them. It’s a similar idea to fingerprinting.’

He paused and looked into the two faces before him — the red cheeks of Sergeant Berry and the pale, pointy features of Constable Weedon.

Berry glanced at Weedon before he spoke. ‘We’ve not had much call for fingerprinting on our patch, sir.’

In other words, you’ve never used the technique at all, surmised Pike. He clenched his jaw. ‘I need you to understand the principles of ballistics and why I’m sending you out to make a list of all the guns, including handguns, in the hamlet of Piltdown. I suspect a .22 of some kind killed the girl, and I want any .22s you find confiscated, so I can test them.’

Berry ran his fingers around the high collar of his tunic. ‘Sir Desmond ain’t going to like us poking around his guns, Chief Inspector.’

‘I’ll take care of Sir Desmond myself,’ Pike said, remembering Dody saying how pally Fitzgibbon had seemed with the local constabulary. ‘I want you to ask the locals to keep their eyes open for spent .22 cartridges in the more popular hunting spots. If all else fails, get some volunteers together and search the woods.’ The policemen eyed Pike dubiously. ‘Not for old cartridges, obviously; look for new ones. Our man might still hunt in the area. Off you go, now.’

Chairs were scraped back, bicycle clips fixed to trousers, and Pike dubiously watched two of Uckfield’s finest dispatch themselves to Piltdown to begin their investigations.

The skeletal remains had been picked up from the Hall, labelled and placed in a storage cupboard at the police station until they could be identified. Pike unlocked the cupboard door to reassure himself that the bones were still there. He felt a pang of sadness as he viewed the chaotic tangle and tried to arrange them in a more orderly manner. He could understand how the case had got under Dody’s skin: a young girl, possibly younger than his Violet, murdered years ago. Someone had to find justice for her, and without his guidance and supervision, it didn’t look like it was going to be the local constabulary.

Satisfied that nothing in the basket had been removed, he put the cupboard key in his waistcoat pocket for safekeeping, then nodded to the constable at the front desk. Shrugging on his overcoat, he stepped from the police station into the bracing air. A figure approached, a tall man with a pleasant, weather-beaten countenance.

The man put out his hand. ‘Chief Inspector Pike? Hugh Montague, I’m with the Uckfield Hunt.’

‘What can I do for you, Mr Montague?’ Pike said, shaking Montague’s hand.

‘Well, it’s more about what I can do for you.’

Pike raised his eyebrows. ‘Oh?’

‘I heard about the skeleton; about plans to scour the countryside for clues.’

News travelled fast. ‘Where did you hear that?’ Pike asked.

Montague’s eyes rested on the police lamp outside the station and he shrugged sheepishly.

Should have guessed, Pike thought to himself.

Noticing Pike’s expression, Montague said, ‘No secrets in a small town like this, I’m afraid. But I was wondering if I could be of any assistance. I have a vast number of beaters at my disposal, you see, and I can organise them …’ he clicked his fingers, ‘like that. They’d make an invaluable search party.’

‘I’m not sure if it will come to that, Mr Montague, but I will bear your offer in mind. Thank you.’

‘If you need me, the boys in the station know where to find me.’

‘Thank you.’

Pike watched as Montague strode off down the street, nodding to locals as he passed until he disappeared into an ironmonger’s shop. Uckfield was a much larger village than Piltdown, boasting a respectable High Street with fancy shops, two churches, its own workhouse and several public houses of varying quality.

Pike had moved to stroke the silky nose of the mare hitched to his trap and was contemplating where to go for luncheon when the animal snorted and pricked up her ears. Then he heard it too: a woman’s voice calling his name and the sound of pounding hooves. All he could do was gape while Florence McCleland, as he had never seen her before — hatless, with her riding habit hitched around her waist — came galloping bare-back towards him. As she weaved her way through the High Street traffic, mothers yanked their children from her path, carriages pulled to a halt and motorcars swerved.

Pike caught the foaming horse by the reins and helped Florence down. She all but collapsed into his arms, her clothes damp, smelling of mud and tears. He half-carried, half-dragged her past the gawping constable at the desk and into the orderly room. Once there she flung her arms around his neck and sobbed, pressing her icy cheek against his neck.

Terrifying images flooded through his mind. He pushed her away and gripped her shoulders so he could see her face. ‘What’s happened? Is it Dody?’ he asked desperately.

She shook her head and gulped a breath. ‘Tristram.’

The beau, ah yes, Pike thought, feeling himself relax with guilty relief. He held her for a few seconds, murmuring, ‘Hush, my brave girl, hush and tell me what happened,’ as if she were his daughter, before nudging her gently into one of the chairs. The girl was in shock; she needed tea. He moved to the back of the room and put the kettle onto the combustion stove. While he waited for it to boil, he crouched in front of her and took her chilly hands in his. ‘Tell me what happened, Florence; tell me from the beginning.’