The Butchered Man Page 10

  “You goin’ to bleed me?” she said. “Put those things on me?”

  “No, no. I want to perform a small operation on the lining of your womb and take out the remains of the child.”

  She stared at him, and he saw her expression as she struggled to understand him. She closed her eyes and screwed up her face.

  “You’re going’ to kill me,” she said. “That’s what you doctors do. Kill people.”

  “I would be lying to you if I said I was sure about this,” said Felix. “But it may help you. Otherwise, it’s not looking very good. This is a chance. Do you want to try and take it? It is your choice.”

  “I don’t have a choice,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “If I die I’m goin’ to Hell. What’s worse, this or that? I’ll be like this for eternity whatever you do to me.”

  “I’ll tell you a big secret,” Felix said. “I don’t believe in Hell. I do believe in life, though, and I am going to make sure you have a good chance at it. So will you let me try?”

  “Don’t ask me that,” she said. “I don’t have a choice. Just do what you have to do. And I’ll bear it.”

  “I’ll give you a bit more opium – that should help. And something to bite on. You’re a brave woman,” he added, passing his hand over her clammy forehead.

  He gave a couple of drops of the tincture and let them take effect, while he gave his hands a good scrubbing. Then took a clean rag, rolled it up and set it carefully between her teeth. Then gently as he could he raised her hips again on the pillows and lifted her knees. He had concealed his makeshift tool under a towel so that the sight of it should not frighten her unduly – he had seen people attempt to run away at the sight of a blade – and he reached for it now, praying for a steady hand, that his nerve would not fail and that his gamble might pay off.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Sit down, won’t you, sir?” Mrs Cley said. “I’m sorry my son is at his work.”

  “I was hoping to speak to Miss Cley.”

  “She is out of town at present.”

  Giles was received by Mrs Cley in the fiercely fashionable drawing room of a large and expensive new house in Martinsmount Square. It was obvious this room was not much used, for the blinds were still drawn down to protect the furniture and the acres of patterned carpet from the light. Nor was there a fire in the shining steel grate. However, Mrs Cley sat on her holland-shrouded chair with her fingers neatly folded in her lap as if this was where she was always found at that time in the morning.

  “Perhaps you can help me, ma’am. I am looking for information about Mr Rhodes.”

  “Mr Rhodes?” she said after a slight pause.

  “I believe you know him?”

  “Yes, we know him,” she said with a slight sniff.

  “How well, would you say?”

  “Unfortunately not well enough,” she said. “Or else we should not have been gulled by him.”

  “Gulled, ma’am?”

  “A very shocking thing, I know, to say of a man like that, a man of the cloth, but it’s true enough. He has made prize fools of us, Major Vernon, and that’s the plain truth of it.”

  “I should be very interested to know why.”

  “Because of my girl. He paid his addresses, and we took him to be in good faith, but it was anything but. And of course, she, poor dear, was the last to know, and has never heard it from him direct. The rogue.”

  “A matter of an engagement?”

  “Yes,” she said and eyed him for a moment. “I suppose you have heard of it. I dare say you know those people, sir, up in the Minster Precincts, them that always look down on us people of the town, because we have made our bread and not inherited. You probably know the other young lady.”

  “I believe I do,” said Giles. “So Mr Rhodes definitely offered for Miss Cley?”

  “Oh yes. We had it all out on the table, my son, Mr Rhodes and I. All that we brought and all that he would bring to it. She has six hundred a year and we had to do the thing properly. I shouldn’t have let her throw herself away, even if he is so grand and fine and what she wanted. No, we wanted him to match her properly, and it seemed he could. He had got that living off Sir Oswald, which is a very nice thing, especially as it meant she would not be far from me, which I could not bear the thought of. A mother likes to keeps her children nearby, if she can.”

  “Of course,” Giles said. “Was this all the income he claimed to have?”

  “Oh no, no, there were various other little things. And then of course there was all that he could expect later. Quite a fortune was to come to him, he said. From some old man in London, and from his godmother. I should have known then and there it wasn’t right. That he was leading us a dance. It was all too good to be true. I blame myself. I should never have let myself think such a thing possible. Men like that do not marry girls like my Lucy, no matter how beautiful and accomplished they are. He was just here to steal kisses and take pleasure in breaking her heart.”

  “Can you remember when your daughter discovered that Mr Rhodes was engaged elsewhere?”

  “It was a week last Tuesday. I shall never forget it. We’d gone to call on Mrs Redmond, and while we were there Mrs Paulfrey came, old Paulfrey’s wife, and she thinks very highly of herself, because her father was a poor curate, and she knows all the folk up in the Precincts and does sewing for the poor at Mrs Lepaige’s and such like – though why anyone would think it was worth knowing her, I don’t know, but Mrs Paulfrey does and we all have to sit there and be impressed. So she was telling us how it was that Mrs Lepaige was still all in a rage about St Gabriel’s Without, because Sir Oswald had as good as promised it to her husband but had gone back on his word just because Miss Sophie Pritchard needed a decent house when she married Mr Rhodes. Miss Sophie being a great favourite of Sir Oswald, you see.”

  “I do,” said Giles. “And your daughter, how did she take this news?”

  “How do you think?”

  “Did you both believe Mrs Paulfrey?”

  “We didn’t want to, of course, and I said to her that it was nonsense, and surely everyone knew that Mr Rhodes and my Lucy were as good as calling the banns, and she retorted that I was living in fairyland if I thought that. Fairyland, indeed!”

  “But you believe it is true now?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “Did he write to your daughter about this? Or speak to her?”

  “We have not seen him here above a fortnight. He left to go to Lincolnshire and see his godmother. He wanted to tell her of his engagement, he said. He even took the little miniature I have of her to show her. He made me give it to him. He had a way like that, of making a person do a thing without you wanting to. Certainly I wish I never had now. He’s probably sold it and left the country, chased by his creditors. Is that why you are here, sir, asking about him? It wouldn’t surprise me if he were up to his ears in debt. He had very expensive tastes. You could see by the cut of his clothes. Oh, I should have known better. I feel like we were blinded, and as for my poor girl...”

  “I regret to tell you that there is worse news for Miss Cley to bear,” said Giles. “Mr Rhodes is dead.”

  “Oh... my... Lord...” she said faintly and slowly. “Dead?” Giles nodded. “How?”

  “Someone has murdered him.”

  There was a long moment while she took in the news. She got up from her chair and went to the fireplace where some miniatures of children where hanging.

  “I should be shocked,” she said after a while. “I should be horrified, shouldn’t I? And all I can think is, well done! If you’d seen my girl, sir, you’d know what I mean. What he did to her...”

  Giles joined her at the fireplace.

  “These are your sons?” he said, looking at the miniatures.

  “Yes, that’s John, he’s at sea, and this is Richard, my eldest. He’s taken over the business from my late husband.”

  “What is Mr Cley’s business?”

  “Butchery – on the wholesale side, of
course,” she added.

  “Your son – what did he think of this business of the engagement? Surely he confronted Mr Rhodes when you heard the rumour about the other young woman?”

  “Yes, of course he was going to, but he’d left town, hadn’t he? Very convenient, that, I must say! So Dick went to see our lawyer about it – for breach of promise. We have a very good case. Well, at least we did, for now he’s dead and I don’t know what to think about that.” She shook her head.

  The door opened noisily and a maid servant came banging in with her cleaning box and a scuttle of coal. She stopped in her tracks, startled to see the room occupied.

  “What do you want, you daft girl?” said Mrs Cley. “What are you doing in here?”

  “I’ve come to do the room, like you told me.”

  “Not now!” said Mrs Cley. “Can’t you see I’m receiving?”

  “But you said always to do out this room when I’d done the dining room, missus, and I’ve finished down there.”

  “Not now!” said Mrs Cley. “Get out with you, at once!”

  “But what will I do now, missus?”

  “Go back and do the dining room again! I’ll warrant you haven’t done it properly to be finished so soon.”

  And with this Mrs Cley chivvied her out of the room, clearly mortified by the intrusion. She closed the door on her and said: “I must apologize, sir. That girl is very stupid. Another little problem I have Mr Rhodes to thank for! I only took her on to oblige him.”

  “In what respect?”

  “She’s one of those little sluts from that place at Brinklow. He said it was an act of charity to take one of them on, and it is, because she’s as useless a lump of a girl as I’ve ever had in the house. I wasn’t for it, but Lucy was all keen. Apparently the ladies in the Precincts all take them in, and Lucy thought since she was going to be a clergy wife herself, we had better do the same.”

  “Mr Rhodes had some connection with the House of Mercy?”

  “Yes, he was the chaplain there. I told Lucy she should make him give that up as soon as he got St Gabriel’s. Not at all the sort of place a married man should have anything to do with, if you ask me.”

  ***

  The road to Brinklow was a pleasant one, and a mile beyond the City walls, the country was still unspoilt, and almost picturesque now that the bad weather of the last few days had been replaced with watery sunshine. Giles wished he had time to make a long ride. But Brinklow came soon enough, and the entrance to the asylum was impossible to mistake, marked as it was by a long wall of fresh pink brick, and a pair of gateposts topped with stone angels.

  Turning his horse into the drive, he saw that the building itself was as crisp and as pretty as a coloured plate in an expensive volume of modern architecture. He had been looking through such books in idle moments at Harvey’s bookshop, feeding his fancy about how The Unicorn might be rebuilt if ever the Watch Committee decided to be so generous. He felt a little jealous of Miss Hilliard’s establishment, although its convent-like gothic would hardly be appropriate for a police headquarters. But he decided to ask her who the architect was.

  A girl of eighteen or so, immaculately turned out in a print dress and starched apron, opened the door to him, displaying all the signs of a well-trained servant. She showed him to a pleasantly furnished waiting room and went to find her mistress.

  The girl came back a few minutes later and said, “Miss Hilliard asks, will you wait for her in her office, if you please, sir? She is teaching a lesson.”

  “Of course.”

  They walked together down a long passageway bright with well-scrubbed black and red tiles. Everything was spotless and in excellent repair. When they came to a door with a neat painted sign on it saying ‘Superintendent’s Office,’ Giles could not help smiling, thinking of the door to his own quarters which was of blackened oak, and closed with some difficulty because of the way the floorboards raked.

  He followed the girl into the room, liking what he saw at once. The girl stooped to make up the fire a little.

  “Have you been here long?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir, nearly a year now.”

  “And you like it here?”

  “Very much, sir.”

  “Where did you live before?”

  “I was in London, sir. I was in bad trouble, but I got a chance here and it’s very nice.”

  “Do you hope to stay or will you find a place somewhere?”

  “Miss Hilliard thinks I can try for a good place soon. I’ve nearly finished my training, you see.”

  “You don’t miss your old life?” he asked, thinking of the girl at The Three Crowns and her flounces.

  “I was a sinner, sir,” she said, finishing her business with the fire. “Why would I miss that?”

  She left him alone then to take in the details of her room. Miss Hilliard had done very much with very little. He liked the tumbler of snowdrops on her writing table, the careful regularity with which she had arranged her books, and the books themselves which all suggested a lively, inquiring and altogether cultivated mind. There were perhaps rather too many books of sermons for his liking, but he supposed it was right they should be there. But there was Shakespeare too, and a few volumes of poetry. Lying on a small side table was a well-thumbed Bible and prayer book. Giles took the latter up, feeling that he had looked too curiously at the contents of the room. The marker revealed the Psalm for Morning Prayer that day: ‘Behold, the ungodly travaileth with iniquity; he hath conceived mischief, and brought forth falsehood. He hath graven and digged up a pit, and is fallen himself into the destruction that he made for others.’

  “Major Vernon, this is a very pleasant surprise.”

  She came into the room bringing with her through the open door, like a draught, the sound of someone playing halting scales on the piano. Then suddenly the pianist faltered horribly and apparently smashed the keys with a fist in frustration.

  Miss Hilliard smiled at it and said, “Poor Annie. She does struggle with her scales.”

  “You teach them music? That’s enlightened.”

  “I’m glad you think so. I have been much criticized for it. But I consider music as important as bread.”

  “And the girl that you called out Mr Carswell to attend on? How is she doing?”

  “He is still with her. She is losing a child, you see. It’s very distressing; she has only been with us a couple of months. She concealed her condition from us, which although it is regrettable, does happen. But I will not turn girls out because of that,” she said. “Unlike other institutions,” she added with some fierceness. “Forgive me, Major Vernon, you will think me very opinionated.”

  “No, not at all,” he said. “You are doing what you think is right, even if it is unfashionable. One can only admire that.”

  “Thank you,” she said, with a gracious nod of her head.

  “Miss Hilliard, I’ll come to the point. I have a rather serious matter I need to discuss with you,” he said. “About Mr Rhodes – perhaps you should sit down.”

  “Mr Rhodes, our chaplain?”

  “Yes. Do sit, please, Miss Hilliard. It’s rather grave news.” She sat down and he took the chair opposite. “You see, Mr Rhodes is dead.”

  She stared at him questioningly for a moment. He nodded and then she glanced away, dealing with the emotion.

  “Oh dear...” she murmured. “Poor man. So how is it you are involved, Major?”

  “Because I believe he was murdered.”

  “Murdered? But who on earth would want to murder Mr Rhodes?” she said. “How horrible. Who on earth would do such a thing?”

  “That is what I must endeavour to find out. And I hoped you might help me. Since you knew him, you may be able to tell me something useful.”

  “I will try, of course. Oh, this is horrendous, and – but really, Major Vernon, there is very little to say, I think. Mr Rhodes was –” She hesitated.

  “What was he?”

  “Entirely unexcept
ional. That is what he was.”

  “He was a good chaplain?”

  “Yes, yes. A very good, kind man. Very pleasant with the girls, but a little remote. But given he was young and very good-looking, that was entirely sensible. I would have preferred a married man and someone older for the post, I must say that, and our previous chaplain and his wife were the dearest of friends to me. Mr Rhodes, on the other hand – necessarily we were more formal with one another. It would have been inappropriate to be otherwise. He was always very correct. That is why this is so shocking. People like that do not get murdered, surely?”

  “Unfortunately they do,” Giles said. “So, tell me, you do not think you knew him well?”

  “No, not at all. It is very strange. Perhaps you will think me forward, Major, if I say this, but I feel I have a better idea of you already than I had of Mr Rhodes after six months’ acquaintance. There was, now I think of it, something elusive about him. Like a book written in a language you cannot understand.”

  “Something to make you uncomfortable?”

  “No, not that. I was never uncomfortable with him. But I had no relationship with him, other than on the most superficial level.”

  “Was he here often?”

  “On Sundays, for morning service, and then once a week he would come and take a confirmation class.”

  “Were you always present at those classes?”

  “Always.”

  “And the young women here, they had no relationship with him other than that? As far as you know?”

  “There would have been no opportunity to do so. I defend my citadel with great care, Major.”

  “I understand Mr Rhodes sometimes helped the girls find places?”

  “One or two girls at most.”

  “One to a family called Cley?”

  “Yes, they took Hannah Matthews a few months ago.”

  “Did you get the impression that Mr Rhodes knew the Cleys well,?”

  “No, it was merely a name given to me. But actually, now I think of it, I did meet Mr Cley,” she said. “He came to fetch Hannah. He seemed a rather rough fellow, but genial enough. Mr Rhodes had assured me they were a kind family, and Hannah is a very hard working girl so I felt sure she would suit. Are they something to do with this, Major Vernon?”