3-Book Victorian Crime Collection: Death at Dawn, Death of a Dancer, A Corpse in Shining Armour. Caro Peacock
that I’d used to write that foolish, light-hearted note to my father. It now served to write a very different letter to my brother Tom. I wrote on the top of the wash-stand, with my travelling mantle wrapped round me for a dressing gown.
Dear Tom,
I am sorrier than anything in the world to be sending such grief to you. I have to tell you that our beloved father is no more. He was killed in an accident in Calais, on his way home from escorting his charges on their Grand Tour of Europe. I was present at his burial. I know that when you read this, the first impulse of your kind heart will be to come home to me, whatever the cost to your career. I am certain that I speak with the authority of our father in saying that you must do no such thing. I am as well as may be expected in the face of such news, and as you know we have relatives who – while they may not be over-brimming with the milk of human kindness towards our father’s children – are much aware of the demands of Family Duty.
May God bless you, my dear, dear brother and help you to bear your grief. I am at present at Dover, and shall write again as soon as I am more settled, with an address.
Your loving sister
Libby
Are you blaming me? If so, read it again and admit that there is not one lie in it. Accident? Well, murder is an accident to the victim, is it not? And suppose I had written Dear Tom, Our father has been murdered … would he have waited tamely in Bombay? No, he would have been home on the next ship and all our sacrifice in parting with him for the sake of his future would have been wasted. Surely there had been enough waste already. And the relatives? That was no lie either. Three or four aunts would have indeed taken me in from cold Duty. I was not bound to write in my letter what I felt – that I should sooner put on pink tights and dance in the opera or ride horses bareback in a circus than accept the wintery charity of any of them. I should have had to pay dearly for it in endless days of criticism of my father. They’d be all too eager to believe the lie that he had been killed in a duel, hugging it to their hearts under their yellowed flannel chemises. Over the years, I’d dwindle to the grey and dusty poor relative in the corner of the room furthest from the fire, doling out physic in careful teaspoons, combing fleas from the lapdog. Besides, if I went to any of the aunts I’d have no freedom, hardly allowed to walk in the garden without asking permission. They would certainly not permit me to do the only thing in my life that made sense – discover who killed my father and why.
I addressed my letter by his full name, Thomas Fraternity Lane, care of the Company’s offices in London. They should send it on by the first available boat, but it would still be weeks or months before it came into Tom’s hands. I drew the curtains across the window and started to dress myself to take it to the post. The stockings I’d walked in were beyond mending and had to be thrown away. This reminded me that most of my clothes and possessions were in a trunk at Chalke Bissett. When I left them there I had assumed it would be only a matter of days before we’d be sending for it from our new lodgings in London. I unpacked my bag, picked up the pen again and made a list:
1 merino travelling mantle with wide sleeves
1 straw bonnet with lavender ribbon
1 pair of brown leather shoes for day (scuffed and soles worn thin)
1 day dress (lavender cotton)
1 day dress (blue-and-white cotton print)
1 white muslin tucker embroidered with lilies of the valley
1 silk fichu pelerine trimmed with Valencienne lace
1 cotton petticoat
1 pair stays, blue satin covered
1 pair garters
1 pair white silk stockings
1 pair blue worsted stockings
1 pair white cotton gloves (soiled with smuts from the steam packet)
2 ribbons (blue, white)
At that point, the maid came in for the tray. She looked so tired and was so shy that I couldn’t refrain from tipping her sixpence, which reminded me of the thinness of my purse. I shook the coins out on the bed and counted those too:
1 sovereign
7 shillings
3 pennies
2 halfpennies
Total: £1 7s 4d.
This was not inspiriting. I’d have to make my rounds of the jewellers again, this time selling the last thing I had, a gold-mounted cameo ring my father had bought for me at Naples. I put on the lavender dress, packed the rest of the clothes into my bag and went out to take my letter to the post. The streets were crowded, full of carts and carriages coming and going from the harbour, an Italian playing a barrel organ with a monkey collecting coins in its hat. The tunes were jaunty, but the monkey had a black bow round its neck in concession to our supposed national grief. I kept glancing round, wary of anybody who seemed interested in me.
It was worse when I reached the office and had to stand in a queue behind several others. The fat man’s agent had come looking for me in this place. The only way he could have known to deliver the note to the Heart of Oak was by intercepting the letter to my father I’d left there. I looked at the old clerk, sitting on his high stool with his pen behind his ear and ledger open on the counter in front of him, wondering, ‘Are you in their pay?’ When it came to my turn he blinked at me short-sightedly through his glasses, with no sign of recognition, and accepted my letter.
‘Is there anything poste restante for Mr Thomas Jacques Lane?’ I said, trying to make my voice sound casual. There had been three letters when I first inquired. The clerk blinked again and went over to a bank of pigeonholes. My heart thumped when he took out just one sheet of folded paper. Who’d taken the others?
‘You have his authority to collect this?’
‘Yes. I am his daughter.’
He gave me a doubtful look, asked me to sign the ledger, then handed it over. I hurried out with my prize, looking for a quiet place to read, already puzzled by the feel of it in my hand. It was thick, coarse paper with a smell about it, oddly familiar and comforting. I touched a gloved fingertip to my nose. Hoof oil, memories of stables and warm, well-tended horses. I took refuge in the doorway of a pawnbroker’s shop with boarded-up windows and unfolded it.
With Ruspect Sir, We be here safly awayting yr convenunce if you will kindly let know where you be staying.
This in big, disorderly writing and a signature like duck tracks in mud: Amos Legge. I couldn’t help laughing because it was so far from what I’d been expecting. Certainly not from one of my father’s friends, yet hardly from an enemy either. Neither the man in black nor the one who called himself Trumper would write like that. I went back to the office, paid tuppence for the use of inkwell, pen and paper, and left a note for Mr Amos Legge, saying that I was Mr Lane’s daughter and I’d be grateful if he would call on me at the Heart of Oak. I strolled back to the inn taking a round-about route by way of the seafront. As I passed a baker’s shop, the smell of fresh bread reminded me that I was hungry and had eaten nothing since the tartine on the other side of the Channel. I stood in the queue behind a line of messenger boys and kitchen maids and paid a penny for a small white loaf, then, with a sudden craving for sweet things, four pence more for two almond tartlets topped with crisp brown sugar. I carried them back to the Heart of Oak, intending to picnic on them in my room and spare the expense of having a meal sent up.
As bad luck would have it, the landlord was in the hall. His little eyes went straight to my paper parcel, calculating profit lost.
‘How long are you planning to stay here – madam?’
The moment’s pause before ‘madam’ just stopped short of being insulting.
‘Tonight at least, possibly longer.’