Frances and Sarah were at home the following Saturday when an unexpected visitor was announced, a Mrs Eves, a lady of some sixty years, who arrived clutching a copy of that morning’s Chronicle. She was plainly dressed in an aged gown that looked as if it had long been doing duty for both summer and winter, and a bonnet of that indeterminate shade which made it hard to imagine what colour it had been when new. She brought with her a stale aroma of dusty carpets and kitchens scoured with old lemons.
At the door of the apartment she stopped, looking almost ashamed. ‘Miss Doughty, I’m sorry to trouble you like this, and if you think I am being a silly old woman and send me home I would understand, really I would.’
‘Come in,’ said Frances, welcomingly. ‘How may I help you?’
Mrs Eves crept over the threshold, and looked about her, approvingly. ‘You are very comfortable here.’
‘Thank you,’ smiled Frances, and she offered her a chair.
The visitor sat, both hands still clasping the rolled up paper. ‘Do you charge for advice? I can’t spare much.’
‘Tell me what you need and I will let you know. There is no charge for a simple conversation.’
‘Only – I was thinking of talking to the police, but I don’t want them round my place searching and upsetting my lodgers or I’d go out of business. I don’t think you’d do such a thing, would you?’
Frances and Sarah had once entered a house without being invited in and battered a door down, but the circumstances had been different. ‘I promise not to do so unless I believe that a life may be in danger.’
‘Oh, no, nothing like that, at least, I shouldn’t think so.’ Mrs Eves twisted the paper in her fists. Frances waited. ‘The thing is, I read in the paper today about the inquest on the bones and the man with a limp.’
‘Do you think you might know who he is?’
‘I could be wrong, of course, there’s lots of men with bad legs. Soldiers, and men who fall off horses, or rickety, or just born crooked.’
Frances could see she needed some encouragement. ‘Mrs Eves, if you tell me what you know, I promise I will make no charge at all for a consultation.’
Her face brightened. ‘Oh, that’s very kind, dear. Well, the thing is I take in lodgers in a house in Moscow Road. I usually have four gentlemen, all hardworking and respectable, and they pay their rent on time and give no trouble at all. But about three or four years ago, there was a man who went away without paying his rent, and I never had any word from him. I didn’t think that anything had happened to him, I just thought he had decided to cheat me of my rent money.’
‘So you didn’t report him as missing,’ guessed Frances. Mrs Eves nodded. ‘And did he walk with a limp?’
‘Yes he did. He told me he had broken his leg in an accident with a carriage.’
‘Do you recall when you last saw him?’
Mrs Eves dug into a pocket and produced a small and very worn book. ‘It’s all here in my rent book. He came to stay on 3 October 1877 and the last rent I had off him was 14 November. A week after that he was gone.’
‘What name did he give?’
‘John Roberts’
‘You had no proof that it was his real name?’
‘No, not like actual papers or anything, but I never ask as long as they give me a week’s money in advance.’
‘Can you describe him to me? His age? His height? How was he dressed? Did he have a travelling bag?’
‘Well, as to age, it’s always so hard to tell with gentlemen, what with all their whiskers, but he wasn’t above forty, I would say. And not specially tall or very short neither. And he wasn’t dressed like a labouring man, more like a clerk. When he came he had no bag, just a few things wrapped in paper, but after about a week or two he got himself a nice leather bag, what must have cost a lot. I remember mentioning it and he said business had been good.’
‘Did he wear any jewellery?’
‘Yes, he’d got himself a nice ring, as well. That’s why I didn’t expect him to run off, when he had that ring, it showed he had some means, didn’t it?’
‘Did he get the ring at the same time as the bag or was he wearing it when he first arrived?’
She pulled a face. ‘I can’t rightly remember. I know the first time I noticed it was after he had got the bag.’
‘Can you describe the ring?’
‘Gent’s signet ring with a stone. I didn’t look close.’
Frances went to get the portrait of Edwin Antrobus that Mr Wylie had supplied and showed it to Mrs Eves. ‘Is this he?’
She looked at the portrait for a long while. ‘I’m not sure. It was a long while back. I’m not so good on faces.’
‘Did he ever complain of toothache? Did he visit a dentist and have a tooth out?’
‘Not as far as I know. But all my gentlemen have a key and they come and go as they please.’
‘Well Mrs Eves, I think you may have some very valuable information, and I suggest you take it to the police at once.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I am, and you may even find there is a reward involved.’
Mrs Eves cheered up at the prospect of money, as people usually did. ‘All right, I’ll go and tell them now.’
‘Well,’ said Frances when the visitor had gone, ‘what can we make of that? On the 3rd of October the limping man did not have a bag. Mr Antrobus went to Bristol on the 8th with his bag and returned carrying it on the 13th. After that the limping man was seen with a new bag and a ring.’
‘If he was the man Mr Antrobus was with in Bristol, he must have killed him and taken his bag and ring,’ said Sarah.
‘Or he could have been Mr Antrobus all along,’ suggested Frances. ‘Supposing he wanted to disappear and rented the lodgings as a hiding place until he could get away? Then he went to Bristol as himself, met up with the limping man, killed him and then masqueraded as him to throw people off the scent?’
‘Hmm.’ Sarah looked dubious. ‘I can see why he would have kept the bag, as that didn’t have any initials on it, but what about the ring?’
‘Perhaps he couldn’t take it off. Mrs Antrobus said it had been getting very tight.’
‘If he couldn’t take it off himself then a thief wouldn’t have been able to take it off either, unless he cut it off.’ Sarah made a gesture like a pair of scissors. ‘Did the skeleton in Queens Road have all its finger bones?’
‘I’m not sure. There were small bones missing. It would be very unpleasant to steal a ring in that way, but I suppose a desperate man might have done it.’ Frances wondered what the world had come to when she and Sarah could sit and talk calmly about people’s fingers being cut off.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The vigilance of Tom Smith and the pawnbroker finally bore fruit several days later, and Tom arrived at Frances’ apartments in a state of breathless excitement. ‘We’ve got the woman who pawned the ring!’ he announced. ‘I was keeping my eye on things up Portobello Road an’ Dunnock was watching the pawnshop when Mr Taylorson come out and said somethin’ to a poor woman what was lookin’ in the window, and ’e must have offered her a good price for somethin’ because she went in very eager like, an’ then next moment, out come ’is assistant, runnin’ as ’ard as ’e could, like Old Scratch isself was arter ’im, to get a constable, only I c’n run quicker, an’ I arst ’im an ’e said it was the woman ’oo pawned the ring, so I tole Dunnock to watch the shop an’ foller the woman ’ome if she went out, and then I went and tole Mr Antrobus an’ I come straight ’ere.’