The Bedlam Detective (12 page)

Sebastian did not need an introduction to tell him the young woman’s name. With her hair pinned up, the resemblance to her mother was unmistakable.

Sebastian straightened up and made an effort to look pleasant.

“Mister Becker,” Stephen Reed said. “This is Evangeline Bancroft.”

Sebastian briefly took her hand and felt almost as much at a loss as the young woman looked.

“Evangeline heard the news and came up on the morning train,” Stephen Reed explained.

“Heard it how?” Sebastian said. “I thought it hadn’t reached the papers yet.”

“The murder of a barrister’s child,” the young woman said. “It’s all over the Inns of Court.”

“You work in the Inns of Court? Are you in the legal profession, Miss Bancroft?”

“I carry out clerical work for lawyers,” she said, and looked from one man to the other. “Forgive me. There seems to be something I don’t understand here. Are you also a policeman, Mister Becker?”

“A servant of the Crown,” Sebastian said, “with an interest in this case. I’d intended to seek you out in London, but instead I find you here. You came because you see a parallel with your own history. Am I right?”

“It’s a shocking crime, Mister Becker,” she protested.

“I know,” he said. “And I know your own experience had a happier outcome. But there may be something we can learn from whatever you may remember.”

Evangeline looked unsettled and uncertain. Then she looked back toward the library, as if half inclined to retreat to it.

“A happier outcome,” she said, and there was no color at all in her tone.

Stephen Reed spoke then.

“Please, Evangeline,” he said. “Trust us.”

“Walk me to my mother’s house,” she said.

T
HEY FOLLOWED
the shore road away from the harbor, overlooking the dunes and the empty beach beyond them. In the dunes stood posts where cork life preservers hung on weathered boards. The cork in the rings was old and splitting, but appeared to have been freshly painted for the season.

Stephen Reed continued to carry Evangeline’s weekend bag. Sebastian held back and let him do the talking.

“Evangeline,” Stephen Reed began, “forgive me. But for a moment I have to be a professional man and not your childhood friend. This may cause you some personal distress. But strictly in that professional capacity, I’ve had sight of the case notes from the time that you and Grace Eccles went missing. They tell a different story from the one in the newspapers. I wish I could spare your blushes, but there it is.”

“I’m not blushing,” she said, though she was. And so, for that matter, was he.

“This is very awkward,” he said. “If you want me to stop, I will.”

“No,” Evangeline said, betraying that she was aware of Sebastian without quite looking at him. He felt that his presence was that of part intruder, part chaperone. “Forget my embarrassment,” she said. “This is important.”

“We need to know what you remember of that night.”

The road made a steep and sandy turn and they began to climb away from the beach, toward a part of town where modest houses competed for hillside space.

Evangeline said, “That’s very easy to answer. I remember nothing.”

Stephen Reed said, “The doctor’s notes are in the file. Please be assured, I didn’t look at the medical details. But when he asked the two of you to explain what happened, he wrote that he saw a look pass between you. Evangeline, if there’s something you know that you have never spoken of, I urge you to tell it to us now.”

“With all honesty,” she said, “I have no memory of anything that took place. Or even of the exchange of looks that he describes. I can’t imagine what it may have meant. If it happened at all. Stephen, I’m concealing nothing from you. I’ve written to Grace several times over the years. She wrote back to me only once, to tell me that she’d taken over her father’s business and to ask if I’d send her notices for London horse traders’ sales. I imagine that in the usual run of things, we’d be strangers by now. I’ve done my best to keep our association alive, even though we’ve only the past in common.”

“Then why persist?”

“Because I think Grace remembers more than I do. I’m sure of it. I’ve been hoping that one day I can persuade her to share what she knows.”

“Mister Becker’s been out to speak to her,” Stephen Reed said.

“I had to dodge a rock for my trouble,” Sebastian said.

Though she’d been serious to the point of a frown until this point, this news transformed the young woman’s expression. Her face lit up, and she let out a laugh that she quickly tried to cover with an apology.

“Grace is a tricky one,” Evangeline said. “She always has been.”

“Perhaps you can talk to her,” Stephen Reed said.

“I will.” She stopped and took the weekend bag from his hand.

“I’ll walk on from here,” she said. “I’d like some time to think.”

A
S THE
two men walked away, Sebastian said, “The medical details?”

“Both girls were violated.”

Sebastian looked back, but Evangeline was already gone from sight. “Does she know that?”

“I imagine it won’t have escaped her, Mister Becker, memory or no memory. How does such an act fit in with your picture of Sir Owain’s madness?”

On the walk up from the beach, they’d passed a board fence that had been set up to hold back the gorse and sand from the road. Its timbers had all but disappeared behind a pasted mass of notices and handbills for pier-end shows, political meetings, temperance rallies, Fry’s chocolate, traveling circuses, and the Judgment of the Lord. They were passing it again now. The freshest, cleanest addition among the posted bills was the notice of the forthcoming inquest, placed within the last hour or two. The paste was still wet.

Sebastian said, “I don’t have an answer for you. But let me take the machine.”

“What machine?”

“The camera, if it won’t be missed for a few hours. I think I may know where to track down someone with the expertise we need.”

T
HE NAMES OF THE HOUSES ALWAYS CHARMED HER
. T
HEY
hadn’t when she’d lived here, but they charmed her whenever she returned. Prospect Place. St Cuthbert’s. Puffin. St Elmo’s. Evangeline was a city dweller now, a grown woman, and these names were her childhood. She wished that she could revisit them with simple pleasure. But between her childhood and the present stood a short passageway of lost time, where there was only uncertainty and pain. Something within her, some natural custodian whose name she did not know, had elected to close the door on that darkness.

As a result, she remembered nothing of her lowest hour. It was an act of consideration that she had not consciously authorized and did not appreciate. In speaking of the doctor, Stephen Reed had avoided mention of any results of the doctor’s examination. Perhaps the doctor had been discreet in his notes. For that, at least, she could be grateful.

As she climbed the last few yards, the sun broke out for a moment. She remembered the summers here. They were endless. And summer society was always strictly divided according to class, position, and propriety. A widow and a widow’s child had never quite fitted in. Which had brought freedom, of a kind. Her friendship with Grace Eccles would have been impossible otherwise.

Here was her mother’s house. Right up at the back of town with steps up to the front door, a view mostly of rooftops, and a side garden that was just about big enough to put a shed on. The brickwork was neat and the paintwork was green. Lydia paid a man to keep it spruced, every other year. The front door was a heavy showpiece with two panels of etched glass like a funeral parlor or a public house, and was rarely used. Evangeline let herself through the side gate and entered through the kitchen door, which, as ever, was unlocked.

Lydia Bancroft’s supper place was laid on the table, ready for her return. Supper for one. The house was silent, and Evangeline felt like an intruder.

But when she took her weekend bag up to her old room, she was surprised to find the bed already made up, and with fresh-smelling linen. She’d given her mother no warning of this visit, so Evangeline could only conclude that this was how she always kept it.

She laid out her nightdress on the bed, but otherwise she didn’t unpack. She went downstairs and out to the garden shed, which was no more secure than the house; its door didn’t even have a lock, but a small toggle of wood that turned on the frame to hold it.

From out of the shed, she wheeled her bicycle.

She hadn’t ridden it in two years, but her mother made occasional use of it, so its condition was good. The tires were soft but the chain ran freely, and a drop of oil and a minute’s work with the air pump had it ready for the road. She never rode in London, but back when she’d lived here she’d cycled everywhere. Evangeline was even adept at cycling in a skirt. Being neither rich nor eccentric, she owned none of the “rational cycling wear” that tended to draw ridicule onto women in public places.

When she set off down the hill, she wobbled a little at first; but within a minute she had the hang of it again and was soon sailing along.

If her mother had been surprised to have her turn up unannounced, imagine how Grace would feel.

O
N HEARING
where Sebastian wanted to go, Sir Owain’s driver said, “But that’s thirty miles from here!”

“Twenty-five,” Sebastian said. “I just measured it on the map.”

“I have other duties than this,” the driver protested, but Sebastian was firm.

“As I recall it, the offer of the car was for anywhere I may wish to go.”

The driver conceded, but did nothing to disguise his displeasure. He went to get behind the wheel, and this time Sebastian had to open the passenger door for himself.

Once inside, Sebastian set the camera down on the seat beside him. The car had been fully cleaned up now, and the broken window given a running repair with a sheet of thick parchment. It was opaque, but it let in some light while keeping the wind out.

These were country lanes, but a good part of the route would be along the Bristol road. When they’d left Arnmouth behind, he slid open the window that divided the passenger cab from the driver’s position.

Leaning forward and raising his voice almost to a shout to be heard, he said, “I fear we got off on the wrong foot, you and I.”

“Did we, now,” the driver replied without emotion. In his cap and goggles, facing forward in a scarf wound tight against the oncoming weather, he had the advantage over Sebastian, whose face was up against the little window with his eyes already beginning to stream in the rush of air.

Sebastian said, “I believe the fault is mine. It’s easy to mistake loyalty for obstinacy. How long have you worked for Sir Owain?”

The driver took a while to respond. And then all that he said was, “Long enough.”

“He said those girls were torn by beasts. What do you think?”

“I wouldn’t know,” the driver said. “I didn’t see them. I stayed outside with the car.” He glanced at Sebastian. “I take it they were bad.”

“Torn by beasts or not. Someone meant to spoil them.”

They passed over the bridge across the railway line. The estuary was behind them now. Beyond the station stood a hill dense with trees.

Sebastian said, “What’s your name, driver?”

“Thomas Arnot, sir.”

“Forgive me for the way I spoke to you before.”

This belated touch of civility, along with mention of the suffering of the victims, seemed to temper the driver’s attitude.

The man said, “If you want to talk about beasts, go to the post office and ask them to show you the book.”

“The what?”

“The book where all the holiday people write down their stories of what they see on the moor.”

“Are you joshing me?”

“No, sir, I am not. And I’m not claiming there’s any truth in any of it, neither. I’ve never seen any such thing myself. But there’s been many a sighting over the years. For all I know, there could be something in it. Some animal escaped from somewhere, going back to the wild. Strange things brought home from faraway places. It’s not always peacocks and monkeys.”

Sebastian was inclined to dismiss it. He’d seen the results of animal attacks. But before he could say so, the driver suddenly said, “Is that why we’re going to the fairground? To see if anything’s escaped from their menagerie?”

And his manner was so changed, now that he saw himself included in the thinking behind the plan, that Sebastian chose not to contradict him.

“Something like that,” he said.

Then he closed the dividing window and sank back into the leather seat, steadying his mind for the drive ahead.

E
VANGELINE WAS
passing the upturned boats by the estuary. Out in the sand and the mud, a solitary rotted wooden post stood firm, worn down to a stump of two or three feet. A tangle of old ropes and knots festooned it like a merman’s necklace. Even farther out, rising from the water, was a dune topped with a memorial cross. A chapel had stood there once, she’d been told, until floods and the shifting river had cut it off from the town.

There was another mile to go. She’d have to keep an eye on the time, or risk returning across the moor as night fell.