The Burning Issue of the Day Page 6

  ‘There’s an office upstairs if it’s a delicate matter,’ said Lady Bickle.

  ‘Delicate? No, I shouldn’t say so. But I don’t think it would do to be overheard by curious ladies stocking up on ribbons and militant literature.’ She looked pointedly at us again.

  ‘Don’t mind us,’ said Lady Hardcastle cheerily. ‘We’re just offering a little help of our own. We can wait.’

  ‘You? Help? What sort of help can you offer? You’re the ones who fancy yourselves as amateur detectives . . . Oh, no. Not you. You can’t be.’

  ‘Can’t be what, dear?’ asked Lady Hardcastle with a smile.

  ‘I’ve come to talk about the murder of Christian Brookfield,’ said Miss Caudle.

  ‘And what have you come to say?’

  ‘I don’t think Elizabeth Worrel was responsible.’

  ‘I think you’d all better come upstairs,’ said Lady Bickle. ‘I’m afraid we’ll have to leave you to contend with the hordes on your own, Beattie.’

  Miss Challenger looked out at the tiny handful of people making their way past in the chill morning air.

  ‘I think I can manage,’ she said.

  There were two doors at the top of the stairs. The one to the left opened into the ‘office’, which took up more than half of the small upper floor of the building. The windows on the Queen’s Road side stretched from floor to ceiling, wall to wall. The centre section of the window was set with a huge semi-circular design at the top, making an archway to frame the art gallery opposite. There was a sizeable oak desk against one wall. It was considerably less cluttered than Inspector Sunderland’s had been, as were the filing cabinets and bookshelves that lined the other wall. The third wall, facing the window, was home to a long, battered sofa.

  Lady Bickle made herself comfortable in the swivel chair at the desk and waved we other three to the sofa. I sat in the middle, perched on the gap between the two overstuffed cushions.

  ‘I can see that you three have some sort of history,’ said Lady Bickle, almost sternly, ‘but I’m afraid I really don’t care. Miss Caudle, I have asked Lady Hardcastle and Miss Armstrong to investigate the case because I believe Lizzie Worrel to be innocent. If you, too, believe her innocent, then you’re going to have to put aside your quarrels – no matter how important they might be to you – and share what you know. A woman’s life might be at stake and I don’t have the time or the patience for any nonsense.’

  ‘Now, look here,’ began Miss Caudle, but Lady Hardcastle raised her hand.

  ‘She’s right, Miss Caudle. Whatever grudges you bear us over the “Littleton Cotterell Witch Murders” – or whatever melodramatic name you gave them – can be put aside for the sake of this woman whom everyone but the police believe to be innocent.’

  ‘You damn near ruined my reputation,’ snapped Miss Caudle.

  ‘We did nothing but reveal the truth. If your reputation could be ruined by something as banal and commonplace as the truth, then it really wasn’t much of a reputation in the first place, now was it?’

  ‘You condescending old—’ Miss Caudle made to reach for Lady Hardcastle but I batted her hand away and turned to face her, my own hands relaxed but ready.

  ‘Ladies! Please,’ snapped Lady Bickle. ‘If you want to fight, you can do it later. I’ll even hold your coats. But for now, we’re talking about Lizzie Worrel. Miss Caudle, you have information, I believe.’

  Miss Caudle lifted her satchel from the floor and unbuckled the flap. She reached inside and pulled out a hardbound octavo notebook with a black cover. She returned the satchel to the floor and sat for a few moments with the book on her lap.

  After gathering her thoughts, she said, ‘Christian Brookfield was a fine journalist. We were friends, he and I, as well as colleagues. He was a man of principle and honour and he made it his mission in life to expose the venality and avarice he saw all around him in public life. He wasn’t interested in gossip and marital scandals – not for their own sake, anyway. He didn’t cover murders or sensational burglaries.’ She looked once more at Lady Hardcastle and me. ‘He wrote about corruption in local government, bribery in local business. He sought out the grubby and the greedy at the heart of our society and he exposed their sordid schemes for all to see. He was not, as you might expect, a popular man among the great and the good of Bristol politics and commerce.’

  She picked up the black notebook from her lap and held it in both hands as though it were a precious relic.

  ‘Brookfield was not a man given to melodrama, but neither was he complacent about the possible danger his work might place him in. He sometimes joked that one day someone was going to take umbrage at his prying and do him a mischief. I don’t think he seriously believed it, but it was certainly at the back of his mind. And so when he was killed in a fire, apparently the accidental victim of political arson, my first thought was that his lighthearted prediction had actually come true. I never believed the suffragette story – I follow your activities with great interest and I knew it wasn’t at all your style. But the police clomped in with their hobnail boots, took one look at the superficial evidence, and declared the case closed.’

  She opened the book and looked at one of the pages.

  ‘I was at work when I heard of his death. He was as popular among his fellow journalists as he was unpopular at the council offices, and the older hacks took off at once to the local pub to hold an impromptu wake for their fallen comrade. I, naturally, wasn’t invited so I went to his desk to see what he was working on. There was nothing really there – a few scrappy notes and a half-finished article about possible shady dealings at Bristol City Football Club with “nothing there – wishful thinking” scrawled at the bottom in his own hand. Then I looked in his desk drawer, where I found this.’

  She held up the black notebook.

  ‘It was where he pulled all his information together before breaking a story. He was always up against very powerful men, so he had to be more than ordinarily certain of his story before he committed it to print. This was where he built his arguments, collated his sources, dotted his i’s and crossed his t’s. If Lizzie Worrel didn’t burn down that shop to further the suffragette cause – and I don’t believe she did – then it’s possible that someone killed Brookfield deliberately. And if that’s the case, then it’s more than possible that this book holds the key to that person’s identity.’

  ‘May I?’ said Lady Bickle, leaning forwards in her chair and reaching for the book. Almost reluctantly, Miss Caudle released it from her grasp and allowed her to take it.

  Lady Bickle leafed quickly through a few pages. ‘Oh,’ she said with some dismay. ‘It’s written in some sort of hieroglyphics. I’m afraid I can’t make head nor tail of it.’

  She passed the book to me. ‘It’s Pitman shorthand,’ I said, having looked at a few sample pages myself. ‘But it’s gibberish.’

  I passed it to Lady Hardcastle, who was similarly unable to decipher it.

  ‘You know shorthand?’ said Miss Caudle with surprise as she took possession of the notebook once more.

  ‘It came in handy for some work I used to do,’ I said.

  ‘And what could a lady’s maid possibly do that would require the use of shorthand?’

  ‘Oh, you know,’ I said. ‘This and that. I’m not at liberty to say more.’

  ‘She’s really not,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Official Secrets Act and all that. You wouldn’t want the poor girl hanged for treason.’

  ‘Well . . .’ said Miss Caudle.

  ‘We’ll have none of that,’ cautioned Lady Bickle. ‘Play nicely. Now, how is it that you recognize it as being written in this Pitman shorthand but you still can’t read it? What’s going on?’

  ‘The shapes are definitely Pitman,’ I said. ‘But they’re put together in a way that makes no sense in English. May I?’ I gestured to Miss Caudle for the book, which she handed over with some reluctance. ‘You see here?’ I indicated a line at random. ‘These squiggles, swoops, dot
s, and lines should combine to form ordinary English words – they’re like our alphabet, but quicker to write. There are a few shortcuts and some common words and phrases are represented by their own special shapes, but it ought to read just like a line of text written in longhand once you know what to look for. But this says, “Doesn’t hit dee ezby yoe weff ticket price.” Gibberish, as I said.’

  ‘So you’re saying that as well as writing in these arcane scribbles, he also used some manner of code?’ asked Lady Bickle.

  ‘Yes, that’s it,’ I said. ‘Or partially it. My guess is that some of it is in a private code where particular words and phrases have special meanings. It’s virtually impossible to make sense of that without the key. “Ticket” might mean “potato pie” for all we know, and we’d never guess. But part of it is in some sort of cipher, and they can usually be untangled.’

  ‘So a code is where words stand for other words, and a cipher is where letters or other symbols stand for individual letters?’

  ‘Exactly that,’ I said.

  ‘Well, hurrah for me,’ said Lady Bickle. ‘So you can read shorthand, but how are you with ciphers?’

  ‘I’m afraid I have to defer to Lady Hardcastle on the matter of ciphers,’ I said.

  ‘I can have a bash,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘There are some techniques I can use. One’s initial thought would be that it would be some sort of simple substitution cipher – a Caesar cipher, for instance – or maybe even a complex one, but the Pitman thing rather scuppers that. Pitman’s is a phonetic system – it can best represent sounds we can actually make – so some combinations of letters just don’t work and ciphers throw up the most unreadable clumps of letters. That makes an ordinary substitution cipher very difficult. On the other hand, it must have been straightforward enough to Mr Brookfield to encipher it as he went along or it would have made the whole thing more trouble than it was worth.’

  ‘So she’s a lady’s maid who can read shorthand and is bound by the Official Secrets Act. And you’re a dilettante widow who can decipher secret messages,’ said Miss Caudle. ‘Who are you two?’

  ‘I’m afraid the Official Secrets Act rather covers the whole sorry story,’ said Lady Hardcastle.

  ‘But do you really think you can make sense of it?’ asked Lady Bickle.

  ‘I can but try,’ she said. ‘That is, if you don’t mind, Miss Caudle.’

  ‘Any port in a storm,’ said Miss Caudle resignedly.

  ‘Then, if you’re agreeable, may I borrow the notebook?’

  Miss Caudle bent forwards and reached once more into her satchel.

  ‘I’d rather keep the book safely under my own protection,’ she said, and handed over several sheets of foolscap. ‘But I’ve transcribed the first few pages. I’ll get to work on the rest.’

  ‘Splendid,’ said Lady Hardcastle. She glanced at her wristwatch. ‘I say, I’m so terribly sorry,’ she said. ‘We have another engagement nearby at eleven. Would you mind awfully excusing us?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Lady Bickle. ‘We’re all terribly grateful that you’re able to give us any time at all.’ She looked at the papers in Lady Hardcastle’s hand. ‘Would you like a folder for those? Or an envelope, perhaps?’

  ‘Either would be fine, thank you. I shall contact you directly, Miss Caudle, as soon as I’ve made any progress. Do you have . . .’

  Miss Caudle produced a calling card and Lady Hardcastle exchanged it for one of her own.

  ‘Good luck,’ said Lady Bickle. ‘And thank you again.’

  We saw ourselves out.

  It was a short walk from the WSPU shop on Queen’s Road to a small coffee house in what the locals insisted on calling ‘Clifton Village’.

  ‘It’s not exactly what I’d call a village,’ I said as we walked along the busy suburban street.

  ‘No, nor would I,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘But they’re not alone. Kensington has a village, after all.’

  ‘Pfft,’ I said. ‘They’d all have a purple fit if they had to live in a real village. No gas, certainly no electricity, pubs that can’t serve pies because a wagon lost a wheel.’

  ‘Do you regret moving to Littleton Cotterell?’

  ‘Actually, no, I really rather like it. I’d kill for electric lights and a gas stove, of course. Although with Miss Jones doing almost all the cooking, the range isn’t as much of an inconvenience as it might be.’

  ‘They have electric lights at The Grange,’ she said. ‘I wonder if their generator could power our little house as well. I’m sure I read an article about transmitting electrical power over long distances. I’ll have to ask around. I must surely be acquainted with someone who would know.’

  ‘You surely must,’ I said. ‘Is this it?’

  ‘Is which what, dear?’

  ‘Is this the coffee house where we’re to meet Inspector Sunderland?’ I asked, indicating the branch of Crane’s Coffee a few yards ahead.

  ‘If it wasn’t,’ she said, ‘it is now.’

  I looked at her enquiringly.

  ‘Over the road,’ she said, and tilted her head towards the opposite side of the street.

  I looked across the road and saw the tall figure of our favourite policeman in bowler hat and overcoat. He was carrying a briefcase, which he raised in salute as he stepped off the pavement. He caught up with us and tipped his bowler hat with his free hand.

  ‘Good morning, ladies,’ he said. ‘Perfect timing. Shall we?’ He opened the coffee house door and entered. We followed him in.

  Once we were settled with coffee and buns, the inspector reached into his briefcase and pulled out a manila folder. He passed it across the table to us.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t let you keep that,’ he said, ‘but I’ve made a note of the pertinent details for you.’ He passed us a sheet of handwritten foolscap.

  ‘I say, Inspector,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Thank you so very much.’ She began to leaf through the file. ‘Splendid,’ she said. ‘There’s some background on Mr Brookfield, too. So far he’s just been a name, a set of high moral principles, and a notebook.’

  ‘I’m not with you, I’m afraid,’ said the inspector.

  Lady Hardcastle quickly became engrossed in the file so I told him about our recent meeting with Dinah Caudle.

  ‘Ah, I see,’ he said. ‘I only met him a few times but I certainly knew him by reputation. We always kept an eye on his pieces in the newspaper and he was a witness in a fraud trial a year or two back. He was younger than I’d imagined from his writing – mid-twenties—’

  ‘Twenty-seven,’ interrupted Lady Hardcastle.

  ‘So, in his mid-twenties when I met him,’ said the inspector with a smile. ‘He was a pleasant enough fellow but he was every bit as serious and . . . and as earnest as you might expect someone like that to be. I liked him well enough, I must say, but I found his company a little hard work after a while. I don’t think I ever heard him say anything deliberately funny. Polite, honest, and charming in his own way, but not given to jocular remarks or humorous observations on the absurdities of life.’

  ‘Perhaps he was intimidated by rozzers,’ I suggested. ‘Maybe he just minded his Ps and Qs when he was with you lot.’

  ‘You might be right,’ he said. ‘Some people, at least, have a sense of propriety and respect in the presence of officers of the law.’

  Lady Hardcastle stuck her tongue out, but carried on reading. It was obvious she wasn’t in a hurry to share what she was learning from the file so I decided to ask the inspector directly.

  ‘Did he have any family?’ I asked.

  ‘Parents both deceased,’ he said. ‘There’s an aunt in Gloucester but they weren’t close and she declined to come to the funeral. There’s an older brother in the Merchant Navy and a younger sister working as a nurse at the Royal United Hospital in Bath. The brother is at sea but the sister came to the funeral on Friday. She was rather cut up.’

  ‘I can imagine. You were there, then?’ I asked.

  ‘I w
as. As I say, I’d only met the man briefly but I felt I knew him better than I really did. From his writing, you understand. A few of us who’d had dealings with him went along to pay our respects.’

  ‘Was it well attended?’

  ‘The church was packed,’ he said. ‘He was a well-liked young man, as it turns out.’

  ‘That must have been some comfort for his poor sister, at least,’ I said. ‘So what exactly happened on Tuesday night? The newspaper report was light on details.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘the lads at the Bristol Police Fire Brigade were called to a fire at a shop on Thomas Street not long before midnight. By the time they got there, the whole place had gone up but the local residents were quick thinking enough to douse the neighbouring buildings to stop the fire spreading. The customers from the Court Sampson Inn next door lent a hand, and the fire brigade lads did their best, but the shop was lost and, as it turned out, so was the one man inside.’

  ‘Horrible,’ I said. ‘Did anyone know at the time that he was in there? Did anyone say anything?’

  ‘No, not a word. The building wasn’t searched properly until the next day – it wasn’t considered safe to go in there until mid-morning on Wednesday. That’s when they found the body.’

  ‘But there were plenty of witnesses to the fire itself?’

  ‘Dozens,’ he said. ‘It’s a popular pub, even on a Tuesday evening. Our lads were there pretty sharpish once the fire brigade boys were called out and they interviewed everyone there and then. But none of them saw anything until the fire had well and truly taken hold. None of them saw anyone or anything suspicious until one of them—’

  ‘Bill Priddy,’ said Lady Hardcastle without looking up.

  ‘Until Bill Priddy left to walk home at about a quarter to midnight and saw the flames. He ran straight back into the Court Sampson and raised the alarm.’

  ‘Everyone who had either helped or remained in the pub was questioned,’ I said. ‘Did anyone think to ask if that was everyone who was there? Might anyone have slipped away unnoticed? Not everyone wants to help put out a blaze or get caught up making witness statements in the middle of the night.’