“It’s me, Sandra—only don’t say anything. Are the men still there?”
“Just one, then another couple are coming back later.”
“Sandra, I’d like you to do something for me—when Billy’s finished with the interview, tell him you have to leave on an errand. Here’s what I want you to do—go down to Fleet Street, to both the Express and the Times, and look up anything you can find on an accident at Bookhams Printers. Billy will be able to give you the exact date. If you’ve got time, you can leave your notes at the office for me to read when I get back.”
“Right you are.”
“Good girl. Do you have a lecture this evening?” Sandra was enrolled in classes at the Morley College for Working Men and Women.
“Yes, so I won’t be home until about ten.”
“And I won’t be there this evening, Sandra; you’ll have the flat to yourself. See you tomorrow.”
Standing in front of the small soot-blackened terraced house on Weathershaw Street, where Maudie lived with her son and Jennie, brought back memories of Maisie’s own childhood. She had lived in such a house in Lambeth. Her mother and father had started off with one room, then managed to rent another, and then the kitchen and downstairs parlor of the “two up, two down” house. The same had been true of Maudie and her lifelong friend, Jennie. Time had moved on and they now had the downstairs rooms as well as the bedrooms above.
“Hello, Mrs. Pettit.” Maisie remembered that the woman had always been referred to as “Mrs. Pettit” out of respect for her son, even though she had never married. “I don’t know if you remember me, but—”
“O’ course I remember you; you’re Frankie Dobbs’ girl. Went across the water to work and ended up doing well for yourself—but didn’t you come back here to live in Lambeth a few years ago?”
“Yes, Mrs. Pettit. I lodged at the boarding house on Solomon Street for a while.” Maisie leaned forward. “I’ve come about Eddie, Mrs. Pettit. May I come in?”
The small woman looked at her for a moment, and pulled a shawl around her shoulders. “Well, what with this heat and that reek coming off the water, you’ll catch something dreadful if you stand out here, make no mistake. Come in, girl, and sit in the scullery. Jennie’s made up the fire and the kettle’s on.”
Maisie followed the woman along a narrow passageway to the back of the house. Jennie Robinson was taller than Maud, and was strong about the shoulders, though lean, whereas the dead man’s mother seemed not only small but diminished. Now they were indoors, Maisie could see Maud had become frail, and it was hard to believe that she was sixty-two—she appeared to be closer to eighty. She took her seat alongside the black cast-iron stove as if she were cold into her bones and could not get enough warmth.
“Jennie, remember Frankie Dobbs’ girl? Went into service across the water, after her mother died, God rest her soul.”
“Of course I remember,” said Jennie. “They always said you’d do well, what with you having a bit more up there than most.” She pointed to her head.
“Any success I have is probably down to the the fact that my mother and father taught me the value of a good day’s work.” Maisie paused, her heart breaking for the women before her, who seemed gray and dark with grief. But she had a job to do. “Mrs. Pettit, I think I should come straight to the point.”
“Sit down first, love. It’ll be easier on all of us, especially if it’s about my Eddie.”
Maisie took a seat at the heavy kitchen table, bowed with age and pale with years of scrubbing. Jennie set a cup of tea in front of her. The women sipped from their own chipped cups, then looked up at her, waiting.
“I’ll not beat about the bush. You probably don’t know this about me, but I am what they call an investigator, a private inquiry agent to some, and—”
“Weren’t you a nurse, in the war?”
“Yes, I was. And afterwards. Then I, well—it’s a long story, but I had this opportunity, and—”
“And someone—I bet it’s that Jesse Riley—thought you’d be able to find out what happened to Eddie.”
Maisie sighed. “That’s about the measure of it, Mrs. Pettit.”
The woman took out her handkerchief, covered her eyes, and crumpled forward, resting her forehead against her hands.
“Perhaps I’d better go. I can come back another time.”
“Sit there, Maisie. Just let me have my moment.”
The woman soon sat back, whereupon her friend placed an arm around her shoulder.
“She’s had it rough, Maisie,” said Jennie. “Eddie was her life.”
“I know. Truly I know. He was a lovely man, so gentle,” said Maisie.
“And he had a gift. I was blessed with that boy.” Maud cleared her throat. “Now then, here’s what I’ve got to say. There’s talk that my Eddie was . . . was murdered. There’s them what reckon someone had it in for him, and so the next thing you know, there’s an accident, only it’s not really an accident. I don’t know what to think, but here’s what I do know—and I used to work down at Bookhams, on the rag vats, until not that long ago before the rheumatism got to me—I never heard of an accident caused by them big belts going or tipping. There was accidents, of course there was; there’s always someone who don’t pay attention, getting their fingers in the way of the guillotine, that sort of thing. But no one was ever crushed under a roll of paper.” She paused again, looking directly into Maisie’s eyes. “So if you want to look for the reason why it happened, more power to you. Every single day that’s passed without Eddie, I’ve felt like topping myself so I could be with him up there in heaven, but I’d stay right here to see someone brought to justice.”
Maisie nodded. “Then can you answer some questions for me, Mrs. Pettit?”
“Maudie. You’re a grown woman now, Maisie Dobbs, so you can call me Maudie.”
Maisie took a clutch of index cards from her bag, and a pencil. “Right, let’s start with Bookhams.”
“Then you’ll have to start with me, Maisie, because I worked there on the afternoon shift before I had Eddie. About nine months before I had Eddie. Three different jobs I had, in those days.”
By the time she left Maud Pettit’s house in Lambeth, Maisie had learned several things she hadn’t known before.
She knew that Maudie had been assaulted while walking from the factory to the brewery; it was dark, so she had never known her attacker—the father of her child.
She discovered that Eddie had only ever been bullied by one person, a boy who made fun of him at school. In fact, Jimmy Merton had made Eddie’s life a misery, mimicking his voice, his walk, his simple way of being. She had a recollection of Merton from childhood. Her mother had warned her to keep away from the Merton children because they were all trouble, every single one of them. Jimmy was older, Eddie’s age, but she still passed to the other side of the street if she saw him in the distance. Apparently, Jimmy Merton had lately come to work at Bookhams.
But of the notes she had penned while sitting with Maudie Pettit, the one that she would come back to, would underline again and again, even after adding it to the case map that she knew Billy would start as soon as his interviews ended, was the note that repeated Maud’s words: “I can’t put my finger on it, but my Eddie seemed to have changed lately—in the past month, perhaps more.” Eddie’s mother had gone on to speculate that Jimmy Merton might have started bullying him again, and she wondered if Eddie was hiding some physical ailment, perhaps a pain or discomfort he didn’t want to talk about. Or if he had lost a horse. “Took it hard when a horse went, did my Eddie,” Maud Pettit had told Maisie. And Maisie had nodded. Yes, gentle Eddie would have taken it hard.
Chapter Two
The afternoon sun was casting shafts of light through the trees on Fitzroy Square by the time Maisie and Billy took their seats at the big table alongside the window. Billy had already pinned out a length of plain white wallpaper upon which they would transcribe their notes using pencils and thick wax crayons of different
colors.
“Sandra came back from Fleet Street—she left this for you.” Billy handed Maisie a sealed envelope.
“Oh, good. She seems to be getting on very well, don’t you think?”
Maisie had been concerned that Billy might not take to having another employee at the office, but the two seemed to have settled into working together.
“I think so, Miss. She’s still looking gray around the edges, though. I reckon a young woman like her shouldn’t be expected to wear her widow’s weeds for a year—all that black can’t be doing much to cheer her up.”
“I think you’re right, Billy. I’ll see if I can talk to her about it. In fact, the best person to have a word with her would be Mrs. Partridge—she always speaks so highly of Sandra, and says that since she’s been working part-time for her husband, she has really organized his papers beyond belief,” said Maisie. “I’m so glad I found out that Mr. Partridge was looking for clerical help and was able to recommend Sandra for the position—we don’t have enough work to keep her occupied full-time here, so it was a stroke of luck all around. Mrs. Partridge is so thrilled because Douglas is extremely happy with Sandra’s work—which gives him more time with the family—so it wouldn’t be a surprise if she endowed Sandra her entire collection from last year.”
“Bit of a woman for the latest fashions, isn’t she?”
“Oh, no doubt about it. Paris would go out of business without Priscilla.” Maisie looked at the notes, each circled with a thick colored crayon of contrasting color. “Let’s see what we’ve got in the way of rough edges to start nibbling at here. Thinking back to your interviews, did anything stand out? Was something said at any point that made you look up and want to dig deeper?”
Without glancing at his notepad, Billy nodded. “I’ve still got a couple to do in the morning, and Mr. Riley said there were a few other blokes at the market who might have a word or two to add, so I’ll go down there tomorrow before the gentlemen come back here in the afternoon.” He paused, tapping a crayon on the wallpaper, leaving a series of dots at the edge of the sheet. “These men didn’t see Eddie regularly, not daily, as a rule, though they said they usually crossed paths with him a couple of times a week—what with all them horses down the market, it wasn’t unusual for the word to go out to get Eddie over there. Mind you, this is what gave me a bit of a chill—each and every one of them said that Eddie hadn’t been himself for a while. Not all of the time—he wasn’t going round with a face as long as a week every day—but they said that you’d watch him walk down the road, and it’d be as if he had something on his mind. And what Mr. Riley said made sense, though at first it don’t sound very kind of him, but he said, ‘It was a bit queer seeing him looking like that, as if he had worries, because Eddie wasn’t normally like that—he didn’t have enough up there to hold thoughts for long enough.’ ”
“Oh dear, that does sound a bit harsh, but Jesse wouldn’t have meant it badly. He thought the world of Eddie.”
“He said that, Miss, and you can tell they all looked out for Eddie. Mr. Riley told me that Eddie’s thoughts weren’t in his head, like with most people.” Billy put his hand on his chest. “He said that this is where Eddie held his thoughts, and when he saw him looking, you know, sad, he was worried that his thoughts had started weighing upon his heart, and his heart was the best of him.”
“Mrs. Pettit said the same thing, that Eddie had not been himself. She wondered if he’d been feeling poorly and didn’t want to tell her—he might’ve been worried about the money it would cost to see the doctor.”
“He could’ve gone to Dr. Blanche’s clinic.”
“Of course he could, but even though there’s a sign outside the clinic informing people that services are without charge, they’re still often worried in case they’ll be asked for money they don’t have. Fear of illness putting them in the workhouse stops many a sick person from seeking help, especially someone like Eddie, who knew very well that his mother was born in the workhouse and was lucky to get out. Billy, did anyone give any idea what might have been bothering Eddie?”
“No. They knew he’d been doing a lot of work for some quite well-to-do people recently—that little stint at the Palace Mews helped word get around about him, and apparently he’d been traveling a bit farther afield to sort out difficult horses.”
“Again, his mother indicated as much, and she said that at first she was worried about him traveling on the bus or the underground, but she said he’d memorized the stations across the whole railway and probably knew every single bus on the route as well as the conductors. And of course, there’s that new map of the underground railway; it’s made it easier to know where you’re going, even though the lines on the map look nothing like what’s really down there. Eddie had a good memory for the little details—I remember that about him, despite what anyone said about there not being much in his head. He just had a different way of thinking and seeing the world, I think.” She made a note on the case map. “The interesting thing is that his mother doesn’t know the names of some of these people he worked for.”
“I suppose he wasn’t the sort to keep a record of who he was seeing and when.”
“That’s something else, apparently he had started a little book with his customers’ names, but it wasn’t there when they gave Mrs. Pettit the sack of personal effects at the mortuary.”
“Could it have dropped out?”
“Or it might have been taken.” Maisie looked at Billy. “Look, here are the notes I made after I visited Eddie’s mother. I’ve circled the items that need to go on the map, so if you can do that, I just want a minute to look over what Sandra’s left for me.”
Maisie sat at her own desk and began to read through observations written in Sandra’s neat, precise handwriting. For speed she had used pencil, but Maisie noticed that in her work at the office she generally used a marbled fountain pen, a gift from her late husband’s parents when they learned she planned to attend night classes. Sandra had indented each new note with a tiny star, and she had underlined any point she believed to be of particular interest. One of those points in turn piqued Maisie’s interest: No union membership had been allowed at Bookhams since the company was bought by John Otterburn. Otterburn was the owner of daily and weekly newspapers throughout Britain, in particular the London Daily Messenger, a newspaper that had garnered a wide readership in the past three decades. The newspaper owner’s opposition to union membership was well known, along with his belief that Bolshevism would “buckle commerce and lead to the downfall of the British Empire.” Despite powerful unions in the print and allied trades, Otterburn had kept organization of workers out of Bookhams—and men who needed work didn’t argue.
From Sandra’s meticulous notations, she learned that Otterburn had visited Bookhams himself following the accident, promising a full inquiry and an investigation into safety procedures at all Otterburn factories and offices.
In one newspaper report, it was said that Eddie’s presence was “tolerated” by staff, who felt sympathy for his condition; a manager was quoted as saying, “Luckily for him, on account of his impaired mind, he wouldn’t have felt anything when that roll hit him.”
“What a callous thing to say!” Maisie thumped the desk as she put down the notes, pushed back her chair and proceeded across the room to the case map. “It says in a column in the Express that a manager at Bookhams reckoned Eddie wouldn’t have felt a thing because of his ‘impaired mind.’ ”
“That’s nasty, Miss.”
“I wish I knew his name, and that’s a fact.”
“Anything else?”
“Bookhams is owned by John Otterburn.”
“The bloke who owns all the papers? Millionaire, ain’t he?”
“Yes, he’s a very rich man. I believe his family were from Canada, and seeing as there’s a considerable timber industry there, it should come as no surprise that the Otterburns made a lot of money in the paper business. In any case, I know where I can get more
information about him.”
“Viscount Compton?”
Maisie nodded. “I’ll ask him tonight.”
Billy gathered the pencils he was using and looked down, his cheeks showing a blush of pink. While he was aware his employer was “walking out” with James Compton—who was not only heir to Lord Julian Compton but had also assumed complete responsibility for the family’s interests in timber and construction in both the British Isles and Canada—even the smallest hint regarding the depth of their relationship caused Billy embarrassment. He preferred not to know about his employer’s personal life.
“Of course, Miss. He would have some important information for us, I daresay,” added Billy.
Maisie tapped a pencil against the table. “And I want to know what happened to Eddie’s notebook. I’ll talk to Mrs. Pettit again tomorrow, and let’s ask the men if they know who was first to reach Eddie’s body after the accident. At some point that notebook—if he had it with him—left his person. I want to know who has it now.”
“Right you are, Miss.”
“According to the early reports, the conveyor was working properly, so why did the roll of paper fall? What caused the ‘inexplicable’ accident?”
“What shall I do next, Miss?”
“Let’s finish this job first, see where we are and if anything leaps out at us. Then here’s what I want you to do—but wait until after my visit to Bookhams. I want you to have a word with some of the employees, ask around as if you’re looking for work, that sort of thing. Find out about the union situation. I daresay there’s a local pub where a number of the men go after work.”
“Oh, I get your train of thought—an accident would give union organizers a bit of weight, even if Eddie wasn’t strictly a worker.”
“It crossed my mind. It is unusual for a paper factory not to have a union presence. I’m not sure about the level of bearing it has on the case, but it certainly paints a picture of the owner as being a man who wants nothing to do with collective bargaining of any sort—he wants to retain control at all times. In any case, I also want you to find out a bit more about a fellow named Jimmy Merton—apparently he was about the same age as Eddie and made his life rather difficult when they were children. According to Maud Pettit, he came to work at Bookhams recently, and might have taken up where he left off with Eddie.”