The Best British Mysteries III

The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter by Robert Barnard

‘Ah!’ said Mr Septimus Coram, surveying the large plate of eggs, bacon, pork sausages, tomatoes, mushrooms, and – his particular favourite – blood pudding. ‘Gives you an appetite, my job, that nobody can deny.’

It was something he said on all such occasions, accompanying it with a deep swig from the pewter beer mug that he always used at such late breakfasts.

‘Brute!’ mouthed his daughter Esther. It was something she said on all such occasions, but only silently.

‘He went quiet, did he?’ asked his wife. It wasn’t that she wanted to know, merely that the neighbours would ask.

‘Didn’t have no option. One brawny warder on one side of him, and another brawny warder on the other side. Not that I couldn’t have coped on my own if need be.’

Mr Coram had all his life been wiry rather than heavy in frame, though a lifetime’s addiction to massive fried meals and beer had given him an unattractive potbelly. His droopy moustache, pince-nez spectacles, and protruding ears produced a facial effect that was far from alluring.

‘People like to know,’ murmured his wife.

‘Don’t I know it! And haven’t I had hundreds of good pints on the strength of it. He went quiet – more depressed than anything else. None of this shouting that he was innocent all the way, though they say he was protesting it even as they served him his breakfast. Innocent!’

He laughed heartily and speared a sausage.

‘They said at the trial there was doubt,’ said his wife.

‘Said at the trial!’ said her husband contemptuously, but not interrupting his chewing. ‘Who said it at the trial? The counsel for the bleeding Defence, that’s who said it. It’s his job. Beats me why they bother with one. No one believes a word they say. The police don’t make mistakes, and Her Majesty Queen Victoria’s judiciary don’t make them, either. Innocent? Innocent men don’t get hanged. And you can take that from me, who knows.’

‘Fool!’ mouthed his daughter, looking at her father closely as he finished the first tomato and sliced into the second.

‘Well, I’ll be off to the shops,’ said Mrs Coram. ‘And I’ll go along to see Bessy Rowlands afterwards. She’s poorly.’

‘Suit yourself,’ said her husband. ‘I’ll be having a kip. But mind you’re back to cook me my dinner.’

Since Mary Coram had cooked her husband his dinner every day of her married life except the day they went to Brighton and the day Esther had been born (and hadn’t he sworn on that occasion!), Mrs Coram didn’t feel any need to reply. As she banged the front door that led directly from the Corams’ parlour onto the street, Septimus put down his knife and fork.

‘A meal like that crowns the day, puts a seal on a job well done,’ he said. His daughter merely gave a sceptical grunt. ‘It’s like God giving me a nice pat on the back.’

‘Must be nice to think that God takes such a special interest in you,’ said Esther Coram. Her father stared at her suspiciously, but decided to ignore the note of satire in her voice.

‘It is, my girl. But it’s nothing to be surprised at. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, and I will repay.” I’m the instrument of the Lord’s wrath with evildoers. It’s natural He should take a special interest.’

‘I see. And He would protect the innocent, to prevent any possible wrong being done?’

‘Of course He would. But He doesn’t need to in this country. We have our constitution and our free judiciary to protect the innocent.’

‘And so if the courts say a man killed his wife, he killed her?’

‘Still harping on about handsome Mr Critchley? Didn’t look so handsome after the drop.’ He chuckled. ‘Yes – the court said he done it, and he did.’

‘In spite of the lack of evidence?’

‘Lack of evidence? The man works in a chemist’s. She dies of arsenical poisoning. It stands to reason.’

‘I’d have thought it stood to reason that if a worker in a chemist’s wanted to kill his wife he wouldn’t use poison.’

Mr Coram’s disgust was manifest.

‘That’s the trouble with you, my girl. Too clever by half. The man had a girlfriend in the background to boot.’

‘Name unknown, nature of relationship unknown.’

‘He was loyal to her, I’ll give him that.’

‘And there was someone in the wife’s life as well. Also identity unknown.’

‘She wasn’t in a position to tell us who it was, was she?’ Septimus Coram added, ‘Poor cow!’ without a trace of compassion.

‘She didn’t sound like a very pleasant person to me.’

‘A very pleasant person!’ said Septimus, imitating her fastidious distaste. ‘You’d believe anything the Defence told you, wouldn’t you? Even if it was that the moon was made of blue cheese. What he said about the wife was just what Evan Critchley told him: that she made his life miserable by nagging. Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?’

‘Not necessarily, if his defence was that he hadn’t done it;’

‘Hmm. Just trying to get the sympathy vote when he was found guilty… Ooh, that breakfast’s sitting heavy.’

‘That’s the trouble with good food, isn’t it, Dad? It has that built-in disadvantage.’

Coram’s only response was another ‘Ooh!’

‘So the situation was this, then: Evan Critchley had got a girlfriend, and in order to marry her he needed to be rid of his wife, divorce being too expensive for the likes of him and us.’

‘Quite right, too. Where would this country be if every Tom, Dick and Harry – not to say Henrietta – could get a divorce at the click of a finger? Morality would fly out the window.’

‘And his wife, meanwhile – in the name of morality, no doubt – was enjoying a flirtation, or something stronger than that.’

‘We don’t know, do we? We just know that’s what your Mr Critchley said.’

‘There was a neighbour said she was often away from home for long periods during the day.’

‘Yah! What does that amount to? There were no kiddies for her to look after. Why don’t you mention the neighbour who said she talked of having bad stomach pains in the last weeks of her life?’

A grimace of agony passed over his face, and he let out another heartfelt groan.

‘Not surprising she complained of pain. She was being poisoned, wasn’t she? No one denies that. The question is, who was slipping her the arsenic?’

‘Well, who more likely than her hubby?’

‘That could be what the murderer banked on: that the police would settle on the obvious solution and the easiest suspect, and not look any further.’

‘Well, why should they, when young Evan Critchley had the means, the opportunity and the motive?’

‘But what the police hadn’t got was evidence.’

‘They had enough for the judge, enough for the jury.’

‘The jury! People who believe what they read in the Daily Mail every day,’ said his daughter contemptuously.

‘And why shouldn’t they read the Mail? It brings to light a lot of scandalous goings-on that oughtn’t to be hid.’

‘With about as much evidence as the Prosecution had in this case. If Isabella Critchley was being fed arsenic, why shouldn’t it be by the lover who’s tired of her?’

Mr Coram’s eyes popped out with simulated outrage.

‘Hark at her! A daughter of mine, sitting calmly in the parlour talking of women with lovers! A girl who goes out to work scrubbing floors instead of looking for a husband who’ll give her a good home! Next thing you know, she’ll be wanting to train as a doctor or a solicitor!’

‘I’d aim higher than solicitor,’ said Esther stoutly. ‘Nothing less than a lawyer for me. And why not? It’ll come in time, and better sooner than later.’

‘A woman’s mind’s not suited to logic and reason. It’s all emotion. Look at you! You start by demanding evidence, then you make accusations against this woman’s lover with not a shred of evidence – no evidence, in fact, that there was one.’

‘Oh, there was a lover,’ said Esther Coram quietly. Her father’s attention was distracted by a tremendous upheaval in his stomach. When it had settled down he looked at his daughter suspiciously.

‘What do you know about her lover?’

‘I know there was one.’

‘How would you know?’ he jeered.

Esther said quietly ‘I have a life beyond this prison of a house.’

Her father made a feeble gesture, threatening her, but it petered out. ‘You say I go out cleaning. In fact, I act as cook and lady’s maid in the house where I work. I am in a position of trust. Almost a companion.’

‘Almost a companion!’ he sneered. A thought struck him. ‘Why are you telling me this? Who is this woman who employs you? Was she his mistress? Or was she the wife of Mrs Critchley’s lover? You imply there was a connection with the lover.’

Esther thought before she spoke.

‘Mrs Critchley visited there. I overheard things.’

‘No doubt!’ he hectored her. ‘You, in a position of trust, would hear things – by accident, of course. And I suppose you never passed them on to the police.’

‘No, I never passed them on to the police. Mrs Critchley was a woman I greatly disliked: rude, offhand, a real little dictator when she felt like it.’

‘So it was all right to murder her?’

‘It was understandable… She and my mistress had known each other very well in the past.’ Her father grunted. ‘Very well indeed.’

‘What’s up with the girl?’ Septimus demanded of the far wall. ‘Speaks in riddles.’

‘My mistress’s secrets were Mrs Critchley’s secrets. She could have done her a lot of harm.’

‘Hmm,’ said Septimus sceptically.

‘My mistress is prominent in the suffragette movement. She could have ruined her, and ruined the movement.’

‘More power to her – oh! OH! – to her elbow then.’

‘So you see,’ said Esther, relaxing momentarily, ‘there’s more than one suspect. And blackmailers don’t normally have just one iron in the fire. There could have been people all over London whom Isabella knew dangerous things about.’

‘What are you saying? That she was a madam? A brothel keeper? If she was, the police would have known.’

‘I’m sure they would. Very interested in brothels, the police. Either they want to use them or to shut them down.’

‘Wash your mouth out, girl. Police wouldn’t.’

‘Police are men, just like soldiers and sailors. But I’m not saying she was a brothel keeper. She was a blackmailer. How she got her secrets doesn’t concern you. I do know that my mistress was going to go to see her, to offer her a big payment to make an end of it.’

‘Are you accusing her of murder?’

‘I’m saying that a police force that knew what it was doing would have made her a suspect. But there’s this difficulty about blackmailers: they’re not looking for a quick fortune. They’re looking for an income.’

‘You’re right there, for once, girl.’

‘A steady drip of money’s what they find useful. And that suits their sense of power, too. They love nothing so much as having someone in their power, gradually turning the screw. In any case, there was nothing that Mrs Critchley could hand over to my mistress and say: ‘There’s an end of it.’ She didn’t have any thing. What she had was knowledge. In her brain. And dying with her.’

She was interrupted by a great roar from her father.

‘Doctor! Get a doctor!’

Esther remained as composed as a steel girder.

‘A doctor, Dad? Not for a spot of indigestion, surely.’

‘This isn’t indi-’ He sat forward in his seat, clutching his stomach.

‘Have you realised that at last?’ said Esther. ‘No, it isn’t indigestion. I’ll tell you what it is, Dad. It’s hyoscine, in your beer. You’ve been having small quantities for quite a while now. It all mounts up. I found out about it by reading all the stuff in the newspapers about the trial of Mr Critchley. They went mad about poisons, and I didn’t think I should use the same thing. So here I am, you see, one more suspect: I could have read up about poison months ago. I could have decided to do my mistress a service and kill her tormentor for her.’

Again the groan, again the heaving sounds from the stomach, again the plea: ‘A doctor!’

‘Oh no, Dad,’ said Esther, shaking her head. ‘I’m going out, but not to fetch a doctor. I’m walking out of this room, locking the door, and I’m going to put this place behind me. See that bag behind the sofa? That contains everything I want to keep from my old life. Not much, is it?’

An expletive came from the floor, as Septimus slid down ungracefully from his chair. Esther stood up.

‘I’m going to go now and fetch Mum from Bessy Rowlands’. I’m going to take her up to the West End, show her the sights, treat her to a meal at Lyons. I’ll tell her I left your meal ready. And while we’re eating I’ll tell her I’m going to live with my mistress. And that’s true, too. We’re starting a new life in Manchester. That’s one of the centres of the suffragette movement. So today is an end for you, and an end for me here. I’ll be better off with my mistress.’ She knelt down and hissed into his ear: ‘That’s what she is, Dad. My mistress. My lover.’ There was an outraged grunt, and some slurred word that sounded like ‘impossible’. She shook her head. ‘Oh no, it’s not impossible, Dad. That’s what Mrs Critchley held over her – and over some other prominent women. They’d been lovers years before. Oh, there should have been a lot of suspects in the Isabella Critchley murder case, Dad. The police picked on the one nearest to hand, and you’ve just hanged him.’

Again the strangled syllables, words that sounded like ‘right man’.

She knelt down and whispered straight into his protuberant ear.

‘Oh no, you didn’t hang the right man, Dad. I killed her myself. Not because I was involved with her husband. Men don’t attract me. Not as a service to my mistress, though I’m fond of her, and was glad to be of help. I killed her because I’m your daughter. There is something in me that wants to kill, and gets pleasure from killing when the time comes. It’s in the blood, Dad. I have an appetite for killing. I get it from you.’