The kettle was already boiling on the back of the range when Amelia and Margaret came into the kitchen. Margaret put tea in a china pot, while Mrs. Redditch, the cook, dropped a lid on the copper kettle on the stove and joined Amelia at the table. She was a large, jolly-looking woman whose good humor seemed to extend to everyone but the kitchen maid, who was sulkily washing up the breakfast dishes in the scullery.
Margaret was pouring tea into three thick china mugs when Mr. Bowchard, the gardener, came in with a bucket of fresh-dug carrots. With a nod to Amelia, who had been introduced to him at lunch the day before, he pulled out a chair and sat down.
“Well, Bowchard,” Mrs. Redditch said genially, as Margaret fetched a fourth mug, “ye sart’n’ly look glum enough, and it’s not noon yet.” She chuckled. “Is the missus makin’ life ’ard fer ye agin?” Mrs. Bowchard, as Margaret had told Amelia the day before, was the laundress at Regal Lodge, as well as several other neighboring establishments, and was known to be a harridan.
Mr. Bowchard, who had the gray, bowed-down look of a henpecked husband, blew on his tea to cool it. “I just ’ad a word with the postman,” he said in a conspiratorial tone. “Seems as there wuz a killin’ in Newmarket last night.”
“That’s nothin’ new.” Margaret poured more hot water into the teapot and put on the lid. “Somebody’s allus gettin’ hisself killed in Newmarket.”
“It’s the rowdies, ye know,” Mrs. Redditch said to Amelia. “They come down from London fer the boxin’ matches and cockfights and ’orseracin’. The constables do their best, but they get drunk in the taverns and knock each other over the ’ead.”
“Far as I’m concerned,” Margaret said darkly, “it’s good riddance t’ bad rubbish. It’s gettin’ so Christian folk can’t walk down the ’ Igh Street without ’earin’ some ruffian’s crude language. Why, even Pastor Johnson-”
“Wud’n’t no ruffian,” Mr. Bowchard put in, with the air of a man who knows something important and is having a difficult time containing his knowledge. He put his mug down and leaned forward. “Wuz Badger,” he said in a low voice.
“Alfred Day?” Mrs. Redditch asked, surprised. “ ’E’s dead?”
“ ’E’s dead,” Mr. Bowchard said definitively. He leaned back in his chair. “Somebody shot ’im. Last night.”
Margaret let out her breath in a long whoosh. Mrs. Redditch sat staring.
“Badger the bookmaker?” Amelia asked in great surprise, remembering how she had met him at the Derby, and how anxious Lawrence had been to drop his bet into Badger’s satchel.
“Right,” Margaret said grimly. “ ’E ’appens to be Mrs. L.’s bookmaker.” She narrowed her eyes. “When did ’e get hisself killed, Mr. Bowchard?”
The gardener gave her a meaningful look. “After nine and afore ten. Leastwise, that’s wot the postman said. ’E got it from ’is brother Tom, the constable.”
“After nine and afore ten?” Mrs. Redditch cried. “But that’s when Mrs. L. was supposed to meet-” Her hand went to her mouth and her voice trailed off.
“Eggsac’ly, Mrs. Redditch,” Mr. Bowchard said grimly. He put down his mug. “My thoughts eggsac’ly.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
In 1835, Henry Goddard caught and convicted a murderer. Goddard was one of the last and most famous of those Bow Street Runners who were the antecedents of the London detective force. Goddard had noticed that one of the bullets in the victim’s body had a curious blemish. With this bullet in his pocket, he set out on his hunt for the murderer. In the home of one suspect he found a bullet mold with a flaw, a slight gouge. The ridge on the murder bullet exactly corresponded to this gouge. Confronted with this evidence, the owner of the mold confessed the crime.
The Century of the Detective Jurgen Thorwald
Following Jack Murray’s directions, Charles located Dr. Stubbing’s consulting room next door to the chemist’s shop a few paces off the High Street. Several people were hunched forlornly in chairs in the small room at the front, but when Charles handed his card to the stern-faced woman at the desk by the door, she rose and led him down a hallway. She rapped on a closed door, went inside, and almost immediately reopened the door, motioning to Charles.
The doctor was leaning back in his wooden chair, his feet propped on his desk, reading a newspaper. For a long moment, he didn’t stir, even when Charles cleared his throat. Finally, he put the newspaper down and Charles saw a paunchy man with an unruly mane of white hair and bright blue eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses. He regarded Charles with a look of undisguised hostility, not bothering to take his feet off the desk or offer his visitor a chair.
“Chief Constable Watson was here earlier,” the doctor said, without preamble or introduction. His voice was raspy, with a slight Scottish burr.
“Was he?” Charles said pleasantly. “Then you know why I’ve come.” Unbidden, he pulled a chair around to the front of the desk and sat down, taking off his hat.
Dr. Stubbing narrowed his eyes. “Watson said that the Jockey Club had some sort of interest in Alfred Day’s murder. He said they’d brought some member of the Establishment in to take over the investigation.” The doctor’s tone clearly implied that he approved neither of the Jockey Club nor of its intervention in what was obviously a matter for the local constabulary.
Briefly, Charles wondered what else the chief constable might have said. He put his hat on the corner of the desk, wishing that he had a better idea of the relationship between the Club and the people of the town. Horseracing might make Newmarket more prosperous, but criminals and crime inevitably accompanied that sort of prosperity. And even if crime were not an issue, there was the constant traffic, the influx of strangers, the noise and the dirt. He could not blame the local citizens if they felt an active hostility toward the Club at the same time that they enjoyed the economic benefits it brought them.
“I wonder,” Charles said without inflection, “whether you’ve finished the autopsy.”
Dr. Stubbing folded his paper and tossed it on the floor. “I’ve finished near as need be,” he said, clasping his hands over his belly. He pursed pink lips. “Alfred Day died of a bullet wound in the chest.”
“So I presumed, from the entrance wound I observed last night,” Charles said gravely. “I also noticed, when the body was placed on a stretcher to be brought here, that there was no exit wound. The bullet must have remained in the body. Did you extract it?”
The doctor swung his feet off the desk, opened a drawer, and took out a cigar case. “Didn’t bother,” he said flatly. “Somebody shot the poor bastard at close range, and that’s what I’ll tell the coroner’s inquest.” He took a cigar out of the case, closed it, and replaced it in the drawer without offering the case to Charles. “Assuming there is an inquest,” he added. “Or do the gentlemen of the Jockey Club mean to subvert the judicial inquiry as well as the police inquiry?”