The Burning Issue of the Day Read online

  ‘It’s going to be hard work with Miss Worrel gone,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Can’t any of the other members help?’

  ‘That’s the problem with a volunteer organization like ours,’ said Lady Bickle. ‘Almost everyone has other obligations. We’ve been jolly lucky so far that the four of us have been able to spare so much time. I’ll lend a hand with a few extra hours when I can, of course. One or two tedious committees will have to do without me for the duration, and Lady Hooper’s Thursday afternoon bridge game might be shorthanded, but some things are more important. And what we’re doing here is just such a thing.’

  ‘Do you think you can get her back to us?’ asked Miss Challenger.

  ‘I really can’t make any promises,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘But that reputation I pooh-poohed a moment ago might open a few doors. We have a good friend in the Bristol CID, for instance. Inspector Sunderland should be able to help us.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bet Lizzie’s life on it,’ said Miss Challenger. ‘The police have all the evidence they need and they’ve told us outright that they’re not going to waste any manpower looking for anyone else.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘But it won’t hurt to ask. He’s a little less hidebound than your average rozzer. And we have a contact at the Bristol News, too.’

  ‘We do?’ I said. ‘You don’t mean . . . ?’

  ‘Dinah Caudle, yes.’ She addressed the others. ‘We met a rather forthright journalist during all that business last year with the moving picture show. I would be lying to say we were pals . . .’

  I raised my eyebrows at this – I would be lying to say I didn’t want to slap Dinah Caudle in the chops.

  ‘. . . but I think she’s the sort of ambitious young lady who would relish the chance to break the big “The Police Got It Wrong But The Bristol News Found The Truth” story. We just need to play her the right way.’

  ‘Well, we’re jolly grateful for anything you think you might be able to do,’ said Lady Bickle. ‘Now, then, would you like another cup of tea?’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Lady Hardcastle, ‘but I think I’d prefer to get started. Strike while the iron’s hot and all that. Every day that poor Lizzie Worrel spends in gaol is a day of her precious life wasted. Do you by any chance have a telephone in the shop? If I might be allowed to call Inspector Sunderland, we could well be able to see him straight away.’

  Lady Bickle led Lady Hardcastle through the Door of Mystery. I smiled at Miss Challenger and asked about the ‘undergarments’.

  Chapter Three

  Inspector Sunderland was ‘at home to callers’, as Lady Hardcastle put it. And so, after offering our new suffragette friends our assurances that we would pursue Lizzie Worrel’s case with nothing less than our customary vigour, we returned to Lady Bickle’s house to retrieve our driving togs and motor car.

  It was Saturday lunchtime and Park Street was alive with shoppers. I eased the little Rover carefully down the steep hill between a great many carts and an even greater number of heedless pedestrians, who crossed the road completely oblivious to the danger posed by our mighty machine. The motor car’s wheels slipped more than once in the inevitable consequence of making shop deliveries by horse-drawn wagon, while the tram tracks created their own, less organic, hazard. The tracks did at least guide the way to the Tramways Centre and the Floating Harbour, though, and from there it was a short journey to the Central Police Station, the Bridewell. I parked as close to the main door as I could manage, where we dismounted and tried to make ourselves presentable.

  I had visited the Bridewell only a few times before and though all of those visits ultimately involved the convivial company of Inspector Sunderland, still my memories of the place were not entirely positive ones. Before we could gain access to our good friend and his CID colleagues, we first had to pass the arcane tests set by the Gatekeeper, in the person of the desk sergeant. On every occasion upon which I had visited the station, the man on duty had been one of the most disagreeable police sergeants it had been my pleasure to meet in a life filled with police sergeants. As we entered the building through the large front door, I found myself hoping he wasn’t on duty.

  Of course, he was. He was sitting at a desk behind the counter, writing in a large ledger, and my heart sank to see him. Outwardly he was everyone’s idea of a jovial man of middle age – crinkly of eye, stout of stature, and wearing the most impressively bushy beard in which small birds and adorable woodland creatures must surely nest. This apparently blithesome exterior, though, clothed a truculently officious soul with no fondness for his fellow man, whose principal pleasure seemed to derive from being as tiresomely obstructive and awkward as he could possibly manage to be.

  He ignored us.

  There was a bell on the counter. Lady Hardcastle rang it.

  He looked up from his ledger. And then returned to the important task of ignoring us.

  Lady Hardcastle cleared her throat.

  He shook his head.

  ‘I say, Sergeant,’ she said.

  He grudgingly looked up.

  ‘I’m reasonably certain we could play this game for quite a while,’ she continued, ‘but one of us would surely tire of it in the end. My money’s on me. Would you be good enough to tell Inspector Sunderland that Lady Hardcastle is here, please?’

  ‘Does this Lady Hardcastle have an appointment?’ he said.

  ‘She does, indeed,’ she said. ‘She telephoned him a short while ago.’

  ‘I see. And you are?’

  ‘I am she.’

  ‘She who?’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake.’ She turned to me. ‘You’ve been to his office. Do you remember the way?’

  ‘Of course, my lady,’ I said.

  ‘Lay on, then, McArmstrong.’

  I turned towards the open double doors to our right, which I knew led to the staircase and the offices beyond.

  ‘’Ere,’ said the sergeant, finally getting up from his desk. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

  ‘Run over our conversation in your mind, Sergeant. I think you’ll be able to work it out.’

  We carried on towards the stairs.

  ‘I am obliged to warn you that you will be under arrest for trespassing on police property if you take one more step towards that staircase.’

  We paused and exchanged amused looks. A telephone mounted on the wall beside the sergeant’s desk began to ring. He answered it.

  ‘Desk sergeant,’ he said. ‘Yes . . . Yes, sir . . . She’s already here, sir . . . A couple of minutes ago, sir . . . I was just about to . . . Right you are, sir . . . Sorry, sir.’

  He returned the telephone earpiece to its cradle.

  ‘The inspector is expecting you,’ he said as he resumed his seat. ‘He says you know the way to his office.’

  We were already through the doors and on the stairs.

  ‘Thank you for your help, Sergeant,’ called Lady Hardcastle over her shoulder.

  Inspector Sunderland’s police-issue desk was piled high with manila folders jostling for space with bundles of loose papers tied together with string or ribbon. A half-drunk cup of tea in a chipped, police-issue cup sat precariously atop a particularly thick pile of documents.

  Inspector Sunderland himself sat in a battered, police-issue chair. The chair was upholstered in worn, cracked leather; the inspector was upholstered in a neatly brushed and pressed worsted suit. He clenched his always-unlit briar pipe between his teeth as he finished the minute he had been writing in a file.

  He placed the pipe on the only empty space on the desk and stood to greet us. Another ridiculously tall person.

  ‘Lady Hardcastle,’ he said with a smile. ‘And Miss Armstrong. How wonderful to see you both.’

  He reached out and shook us by the hand.

  ‘How do you do, Inspector, dear?’ said Lady Hardcastle. She indicated the cluttered desk. ‘I do hope we’re not interrupting urgent work.’

  ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘All this
is from one case. Would you believe it? Somewhere in that seemingly impenetrable paper jungle is the evidence we need to convict a nasty little man of fraud, embezzlement, and murder. I just have to find all the pieces.’

  ‘Heavens,’ she said. ‘Well, we shan’t keep you from it for too long, but I would value your help if you can spare us a few moments.’

  ‘For you, my lady, anything. Would you care for some tea? There’s almost certainly a pot on the go somewhere. The police force runs on tea.’

  ‘If it’s not too much trouble,’ she said, ‘that would be lovely.’

  ‘Never any trouble for me – I have minions. It’s the advantage of being an inspector. Excuse me for just a moment.’ He went to the door, where he shouted, ‘Smith! Tea for three. My office.’

  We heard a faint, ‘Yes, sir,’ from down the corridor.

  ‘There, you see?’ said the inspector. ‘No trouble at all.’

  He fussed about for a few moments, moving yet more paper from two chairs and placing it on the linoleum-covered floor.

  ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Have a seat.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘I’ve never been in your lair before. It’s cosy.’

  ‘An ill-favoured thing, my lady, but mine own. If I’m promoted to chief inspector, I’ll get a piece of carpet.’

  ‘It’s nice that they give you something to look forward to.’

  The tea arrived. Apparently all the station’s cups were chipped.

  Once Constable Smith had left, taking the inspector’s half-drunk cup and closing the door behind him, Inspector Sunderland settled back in his own chair and resumed the contemplative chewing of his pipe.

  ‘So, then, ladies, what can I do for you?’ he said.

  ‘How much do you know about the Thomas Street arson?’ said Lady Hardcastle.

  ‘It’s been mentioned in briefings. One of my colleagues was the investigating officer, but I’m familiar with the nuts and bolts. What’s your interest in the case?’

  ‘We’ve been asked to look into it.’

  ‘Have you?’ he said slowly. ‘Have you, indeed? By whom?’

  ‘By Lizzie Worrel’s colleagues in the WSPU. They’re adamant that she’s innocent.’

  ‘I see. You believe them?’

  ‘I’m certainly inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt,’ she said. ‘The evidence in her favour is . . . well, it’s virtually non-existent if I’m honest, but they make a good case for the unlikeliness of her guilt. And the police case is circumstantial, at best.’

  ‘I’d have to agree with you there,’ he said. ‘Anyone can scatter suffragette leaflets about the place. The shopkeeper was known locally as an anti-suffragist – he had a poster in the window advertising a meeting of the Men’s League for Opposing Woman Suffrage – so someone who bore a grudge for any sort of reason could burn the place down, blame the suffragettes, and no one would bat an eyelid. Even the so-called “signed note” is written in block capitals, so it doesn’t really prove anything. Added together it presents the semblance of a case, but a half-decent brief could cast “reasonable doubt” in the minds of a reasonable jury.’

  ‘Is that what the investigating officer thinks?’

  ‘He has his own doubts, of course – he’s a fine and conscientious officer – but he’s been told not to waste any more time on it. We’ve got our murderer and we should get on with solving other crimes, apparently. For my part I don’t rate Miss Worrel’s chances of getting a reasonable, impartial jury. Not these days – we’re a country divided. I rather fear that a jury of anti-suffragists would be inclined to convict on the flimsiest circumstantial evidence, and it’s not at all hard to find a jury of anti-suffragists.’

  ‘I think that’s the WSPU’s worry in a nutshell.’

  ‘What do they want you to do, exactly?’

  ‘They want us to find out who really set fire to that shop and killed Mr Bakersfield.’

  ‘Brookfield, my lady,’ I said.

  ‘Quite so,’ she said.

  ‘I see. Well, there’s nothing I can do officially, you understand,’ said the inspector. ‘The mood around here is, shall we say, “unsympathetic” to the suffragette cause. What with that and the certainty among my superiors that we already have the culprit, I need to box clever. But I confess I share your misgivings and I do have my sources, so if I can help in any way on the QT you have only to call. It’s probably best that you call me at home, though.’

  He wrote a telephone number on the back of one of his official calling cards and handed it to Lady Hardcastle.

  ‘You’re very kind,’ she said as she put the card into her handbag. ‘But we don’t want you to get into any trouble with your superiors.’

  ‘What they don’t know can’t hurt them,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to be able to do much on your behalf, not without making even more trouble for us all, but I’ll do what I can.’

  ‘Thank you, Inspector. You can count on our discretion.’

  We spent the rest of our visit to the Bridewell in more cheerful conversation while we finished our tea. We once more accepted the inspector’s non-specific invitation to ‘Come and dine with us one evening – Mrs Sunderland would love to meet you,’ before taking our leave. Sergeant Massive Beard didn’t even look up.

  We drove back to Clifton and parked on Regent Street so that Lady Hardcastle could have ‘a quick look round the shops before we head home’.

  Our ‘quick look round the shops’ lasted two hours. Lady Hardcastle’s favourite dressmaker, milliner, and boot maker were graced with our presence and several orders were placed. But it was our final stop just before five o’clock that caused by far the most ooh-ing and ahh-ing on the part of my employer. It was a confectioner’s and the poor shopkeeper was run ragged fetching jars from shelves as she indulged her fondness for sweets. Time ticked on, and by the time ‘just one more thing’ had turned into just ten more things, the poor shopkeeper caught my eye and looked at me imploringly. He was glad of the business, I’m sure, but very obviously wanted to go home to his family and put his feet up after a busy week. He filled what he hoped was the last paper bag with a quarter pound of mint humbugs and I discreetly moved Lady Hardcastle to the door before she could ask for the aniseed twists she had just spotted. The shopkeeper smiled weakly at me and we left him to close up.

  ‘Liquorice?’ said Lady Hardcastle, offering me one of the many bags she now carried.

  I took the proffered sweet as we walked on.

  ‘Mother didn’t approve of sweets,’ she said. ‘“They’ll rot your teeth and make you fat, Emily,” she used to say.’

  ‘She wasn’t wrong,’ I said.

  ‘Perhaps not, but all things in moderation.’

  I looked pointedly at the bagful of bags she carried and raised my eyebrows.

  ‘There must be nearly five pounds of sweets in there,’ I said.

  ‘There must be,’ she said, ‘and you’ve left me to carry them on my own.’

  ‘The exercise will do you good after eating all those sweets.’

  ‘I’m sure it will,’ she said. ‘Barley sugar?’

  ‘No thank you, my lady.’

  We reached the motor car and readied ourselves for the journey home.

  ‘I’ve just realized why I’m tucking into these sweets with such gusto,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘We haven’t had any lunch.’

  ‘There hasn’t been time,’ I said. ‘And I’m not sure I could have managed much after Lady Bickle filled us up with sandwiches and cake.’

  ‘Nor could I, I’m sure. But that was six hours ago and I’m starving. Shall we find a smart little dining room?’

  ‘I’m sure there are plenty to choose from,’ I said. ‘We’re in Clifton, after all.’

  ‘We are, we are,’ she mused. ‘Didn’t we pass a fish and chip shop earlier?’

  ‘When?’ I asked.

  ‘On our way to the police station. Or on the way back. Tudor-looking place near the Guildhall.’
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  ‘I know where you mean,’ I said. ‘You fancy fish and chips, then?’

  ‘Rather!’ she said eagerly. ‘I haven’t had fish and chips for simply ages. We can eat them from the paper in the motor car. We had them once or twice when I was young, you know. Mother wouldn’t let us eat them in the street. She insisted we take them home and put them on china plates.’

  ‘The more I hear about your mother,’ I said as I fitted the starting handle into its socket, ‘the more I like her. No sweets, and no eating in the street. Would that more people followed her example.’

  ‘Oh, pish and fiddlesticks, you diminutive Welsh killjoy. You and your chapel ways. We shall eat fish and chips in the motor car, with toffee and fudge for pudding. Drive me to the fish shop at once.’

  We found the fish and chip shop in a half-timbered building at the bottom of Christmas Steps, exactly where Lady Hardcastle had indicated. And, exactly as she had demanded, we ate our battered hake and chips straight from the newspaper as we sat huddled in the Rover on Lewin’s Mead. I confess it was one of the best meals I’ve ever had.

  By the time we returned home, Edna and Miss Jones had gone. While Lady Hardcastle stashed her enormous haul of sweets in her study, I set about relighting the fires and loading up the evening tray with brandy, cheese, and crackers.

  She called to me from the study.

  ‘We’ll need the crime board, I think,’ she said. ‘Would you be a poppet and fetch it down from the attic? Set it up in the drawing room for now, please.’

  I put down the tray and plodded upstairs to find the large blackboard and easel that Lady Hardcastle referred to as her ‘crime board’. During her time at university she had become accustomed to sharing her workings with her fellow students on blackboards and it remained her favourite way to puzzle things out.

  Once it was set up and we were settled in our comfy chairs with our drinks and cheese, Lady Hardcastle began drawing placeholder sketches of the shop on Thomas Street, the late Mr Christian Brookfield, and the suspect, Lizzie Worrel. As time went on and she saw more places and people connected with the case, she would replace the sketches with more accurate portrayals, but for now she pinned them on the board and began to make notes.