Chapter 15

Fifteen

Guildford was a quaint village in Surrey south of London, surrounded by farm land.

It had changed very little over the last three hundred years, with cobbled lanes, white-washed houses, many with thatched roofs, a stream that meandered through the middle of the village, a church and a handful of other buildings built around a town square. One of those buildings was the Borough Hall that also contained the local postal office.

It was two hours travel from Paddington Station in London, that sprawling domed rail station with a dozen tracks spreading like fingers across various parts of London and beyond.

By comparison, Guildford station had two tracks, one incoming and one outgoing, and a single-story red brick stationhouse with a roof that extended out over the platform as a means of protecting passengers from the weather that had followed us from London.

I had remembered to bring an umbrella from the office and opened it as we departed the rail car upon our arrival.

We made inquiries and the station master directed us to the postal office at Borough Hall, a place where all, he claimed, who lived in Guildford were known.

"For collecting the taxes," the clerk said with a nod.

A driver appeared and took us to Borough Hall. We had arrived before midday from London. The mayor was off on some bit of business, and we were assisted by a clerk, an older man with sleeves rolled back and an apron, who appeared as if he managed the tavern we had passed on the ride from the rail station.

When Brodie introduced us, he replied with that rural accent that I had become familiar with on my travels in the past beyond London proper. "From London, are you now."

"I have a post sent from Guildford from a friend I haven't communicated with in years," I replied and ignored the bemused look Brodie gave me. It was, after all, a small lie and hardly the sort that would cause any harm. "If you know where I might find them?"

He gave me a long look, the sort that takes in head to foot. He apparently decided that I wasn't the criminal sort or one who would cause anyone harm.

"What might the name be?" he asked.

"Walmsley."

"It has been some time since you've visited then," he replied. "Johnathan passed on early this year after a long illness. His wife, Cora, lives in a small cottage just past the leathermakers."

"It's hard on a woman on her own with no family. Lost a child right after they came here. And I hear she's not well either." he added. "You might keep that in mind."

"How far?" Brodie inquired.

"Just down the way. "You might want Gilly, who brought you from the station, to take you there, what with the weather. He'll be back soon after returning with Mr. Soames from a meeting with the church council."

The rain had thickened and the roadway, mostly dirt, was awash and not the best for walking. It seemed we had no other choice but to wait.

"You're welcome to wait here, or across the way at the ale house. My wife makes excellent sandwiches with fresh meat."

And that answered the question about that apron. He obviously worked two positions, as clerk for the mayor and at the tavern.

"That will do verra well," Brodie replied and thanked him.

We set off for the ale house, Brodie's hand on my arm as if he thought I might wash away with the rain in the street.

The ale house was full for that time of the day, no doubt due to the weather. The customers appeared to be farmers, workers apparently from the local mill, a local leathermaker by the conversation at the bar, and Gilly, who had stopped by after delivering Mr. Soames to his meeting and was waiting to return to pick him up after.

Mr. Ross waived Gilly down and explained that we would need his services after the midday meal.

Gilly was a lanky, ruddy-faced lad with dark hair and dark eyes. I liked him immediately. It might have been those dark eyes, full of mischief and keen appraisal of myself.

Brodie put in an order for two sandwiches, that Mrs. Ross prepared.

"Are ye certain one will be enough?" Brodie teasingly inquired.

"Perhaps one for the return to London," I suggested which brought the intended response.

"The lady and gentleman have come calling on Cora Walmsley," Mr. Ross informed Gilly.

I caught Brodie's bemused expression at being called a gentleman.

"They will need a ride in your rig."

"I can take you as soon as you finish," Gilly replied. "The mayor said it was going to be a long meeting and there was no need for me to wait."

As boasted, the sandwiches were delicious. Afterward, Brodie signaled to Gilly, who had taken up a game of dice with one of the other customers while he waited.

He brought his rig around from across the street in front of the Borough Hall.

It was an old coach that carried passengers as well as cargo, evidenced by the small wood crates that filled the seat across as well as the boot.

"Deliveries I need to make," Gilly explained as he shifted the crates. "Eggs that I picked up on the way back. These will go to the grocer after I deliver you."

Eggs. I caught Brodie's amused expression.

In no time at all, even with the weather, we reached the small cottage Mr. Ross had spoken of.

There was electric in the village proper, however none here. A faint light glowed from the small window that faced out onto the road and smoke curled from the stone chimney.

"Mrs. Walmsley takes in mending," Gilly explained. "Poor lady lost her husband winter past. Doesn't seem to have any other family. Mostly keeps to herself.

"The vicar sees that she has food when she needs it," he continued. "I heard that she's not well."

An older woman who had lost her husband, apparently had no other family, and took in mending and sewing to support herself.

I didn't know what to expect when we set out. What did a woman who was forced to accept church charity in order to survive have to do with Charlotte Mallory? And for what reason had she sent those letters?

Brodie seemed to sense my hesitation. "It canna hurt to ask a few questions."

I knew that he was right. Yet, it was this part of our inquiry cases that could be difficult. Still, C. Walmsley had sent those letters.

As Brodie knocked on the door of the cottage, Gilly said that he would return in an hour in order for us to make the afternoon train back to London.

We waited several moments and began to think that Mrs. Walmsley wasn't going to answer. Then, there was a sound from the latch and the door slowly opened.

"Yes?"

Everything that I might have expected—someone perhaps hoping to frighten a young woman for financial gain, or out of some other scheme—immediately disappeared.

Cora Walmsley was small and slightly stooped at the shoulders. She wore a simple gray gown that was much mended. Gray hair was pulled back into a bun, and the lines on her face spoke of pain and heartache, which I certainly had no intention of adding to.

"You are C. Walmsley who recently set a letter to Charlotte Mallory in London?"

I saw the uneasiness that filled those eyes. "You are not Charlotte Mallory."

"No, but we're here on her behalf."

"Behalf?"

"There has been an incident," Brodie explained. "Miss Mallory is dead and your letter was found with her."

"Dead?" she replied, obviously quite surprised. "Are you the police?"

"No," Brodie assured her. "We are trying to find out what happened on behalf of a friend."

There was still that suspicion. I took the letter out of my bag and showed it to her.

"You sent her this letter, and she had written you back." I had that letter as well. Possible evidence, Brodie had called it.

"We are only trying to find some answers."

"Dead?" she repeated and shook her head. "I never meant no harm, not for her."

Not for her? What was that supposed to mean? Someone else perhaps?

She finally stepped back and opened the door.

"I meant no harm when I sent those letters," she repeated as we sat at the table to one side of the main room of the cottage.

"Why did you send them?"

She looked from me to Brodie, then finally said, "All I've got is tea to offer you."

"That is not necessary Mrs. Walmsley," Brodie assured her. "We do not want to impose."

She fixed tea, perhaps taking the time to try to decide what to tell us, if anything.

She set mismatched cups on the table.

"I read about you in the dailies," she said, returning to pour tea into the cup before of me.

"Lady Forsythe. You don't use the title?"

"I find it awkward at times, and I now use my husband's name as well," I explained with a look over at Brodie.

She set the teapot down.

"My husband passed this last winter," she explained. Her face softened. "He was a good man." And then as if to convince us of that, or perhaps herself, "He was!" Her voice trembled as she continued.

"We came here almost five years ago it is now." She looked from Brodie to me. "He said that the country air would be good for our son and he bought this cottage for us.

"He said the money for the cottage was an inheritance he didn't know about beforehand. I thought it was strange at the time, as both our families were simple people, and I never heard about any inheritance.

"Afterward he kept the books for the church and other places about the village to pay for food and medicine for our son.

"Our boy died that next winter. The doctor who makes calls in the village said that his lungs were ‘gone' and his heart just gave out. My John was not the same afterward. He blamed himself for the loss of our boy.

"John got sick just about this time last year. The physician said that it was the influenza that so many got about that time. I took good care of him, but he only got worse. I never caught it. The doctor said that it happens that way sometimes."

She stared down at her hands wrapped around the chipped tea cup.

"It was near the end when he told me where the money for the cottage came from. It was as if he needed to ease his mind about it."

She reached across the table and picked up the envelope that contained the first letter with that cryptic message she had sent Charlotte Mallory. She stared down at it.

"He said that he was given the money for doing something important for the man he worked for, but it was necessary for us to leave London afterward. He did it for our son. I know that doesn't excuse what he did…"

Secrets and lies, I thought.

"Who was the man he worked for?" Brodie asked.

"Sir Mallory, the barrister, for several years," she replied. "It was a good position and paid well."

"And the reason he was paid to leave London?" I inquired.

Cora Walmsley looked up then, and I had never seen a more miserable expression on someone's face.

"Because of what he saw," she replied in a soft voice.

"Wot did he see?" Brodie asked.

"He had left work and he was on his way home. He wasn't able to find a driver so he walked that night. He passed by Rules, that fancy restaurant. Just beyond, he heard a boy, one of the newspaper boys finishing his shift, shout that a young woman had been found dead just beyond.

"The police had been summoned. That's when a young man ran into my husband as if he was running from a fire. He was finely dressed and had blood on the front of his shirt."

I sensed there was more.

"He didn't recognize the young man at first. The newspapers were filled with the story about the young woman who was murdered. Her father was a well-to-do merchant. Harris was the name.

"There were those who heard the young man and woman arguing. He was taken in by the police. Johnathan said that the young man claimed to have been another place when the young woman was attacked and killed. His family hired the best lawyer for his defense against the charges."

"The young man's name?" Brodie inquired, although I already fairly certain what that was.

"Ormsby," she replied. "A very well-placed family it seems."

"And the lawyer hired to defend the young man?"

"Sir Mallory."

The finest lawyer that Ormsby money could buy, and John Walmsley's employer.

"John went to him and told him what he had seen that night. He was told that it wouldn't be necessary for him to speak in court."

"And it was shortly thereafter that it was suggested that he leave London," Brodie concluded.

Cora Walmsley nodded.

"And the letters?" I then inquired.

"I saw the announcement that Sir Mallory's daughter was engaged to be married to the man who came to my husband and persuaded him to leave."

"Who was the man?"

"He was a law clerk at the time, by the name of Eddington."

He had learned his skills well from one of the most powerful barristers in England.

"And you decided to contact Miss Mallory," Brodie replied.

"I thought she needed to know the sort of man she was going to marry, the kind that would do knowingly something like that."

People are not what they pretend to be.

And the second letter.

Secrets and lies are the devil's work.

Cora Walmsley had answered the question about the letters that Charlotte Mallory had received. Both letters were an attempt to right a horrible wrong that had obviously haunted John Walmsley all those years. And no doubt an attempt to warn Charlotte Mallory against marrying Andrew Eddington, who was complicit in the scheme, something that was quite illegal—the bribery of a witness for the sake of a client, Gerald Ormsby.

Ormsby was eventually released for lack of evidence, and then dead merely a matter of months later in a riding accident. Perhaps justice had been served.

All of it was tragic to be certain, and the Walmsleys had both suffered for it, along with the loss of their child.

Yet, there was still the question: why were two young women now dead?

"Wot are ye thinkin'?" Brodie asked as the train wound its way back toward London.

We had left Guildford just over an hour earlier with some answers. However, with other questions that still had no answer.

After leaving Cora Walmsley's cottage, we had stopped by the church at the edge of the village. There we had left funds specifically to help her with food and anything else she might need.

There undoubtedly were those who would have argued that while tragic, what she had done in sending those letters was cruel.

Yet, she had broken no law even though it would have undoubtedly been said that her husband had in the money he had taken to remain quiet about what he had seen and then disappearing.

A tragic choice made not out of greed, but with the best of intentions, yet he had carried the guilt from it to his grave.

"The two murders are somehow connected," I finally replied, then looked at the man beside me who had far more experience in such things.

"But how? And why?"

Brodie's hand covered mine. "Your woman's intuition?"

"It's there. I know it is. We just haven't found it yet."

He folded my hand in his, something that had become a habit.

"Aye," he agreed. "There is something more that we haven't yet found. Perhaps Mr. Dooley will have information about that warehouse fire when we return."

There was a note from Mr. Dooley tucked into the door frame of the office when we arrived.

He found ‘one of the lads,' as he said, referring to his fellow police, a constable who remembered the fire well. He included the man's name. He had been on the watch at the docks the night of the fire, and we would do well to meet at the location and speak with him as well.

Perhaps there was something he could tell us about that night.

For myself, I wanted to go over everything we had learned with the hope that I might find something that could be helpful in solving those two murders.

In the meantime, I needed to contact my good friend, Templeton. She had an acquaintance with the manager of the opera house, and a new production was to begin the following evening.

Several weeks earlier I thought it might be a good experience for Lily.

Aunt Antonia had looked at me with disapproval when I spoke of it at the time.

"Opera? It is so very boring and everything is in Italian. It will be over the dear girl's head. She will never wish to attend another production."

"It's not opera," I explained. "It's a cabaret that will be performing at the Opera House."

"Oh, excellent. I've not been to one."

I had invited my sister as well; however, she was far into wedding planning and jitters as they call them, and there was no amount of coercion I could have used on Brodie.

"It is one of those things that women appreciate far more," he had made the excuse.

I suspected that he would rather have had someone poke him in the eye than accompany us. It did seem there would be four of us attending, which then included Munro, as he never let my great-aunt venture out alone and unprotected in the city. Although as I had pointed out more than once, pity the person who attempted to accost her in any way.

The cane she always carried was hardly to assist in walking. And I had overheard recently a comment Munro had made to Brodie, that she has specifically requested a revolver that she might keep in her handbag, much like the one I carried when out and about in different parts of the city.

He had asked what the devil a cabaret was. I explained what I remembered from my school forays in Paris.

" A burly que?" he then asked. It was close enough that I understood.

Not precisely, I thought. Supposedly there would be no removal of clothes.

" Ye may as well know that her ladyship has requested a firearm for when she's out and about," Munro confided in me at the time, and I was always willing to be supportive where my great-aunt was concerned.

"Robbers, and all sort of bad characters, I suppose ," I replied at the time.

He shook his head at the time. " I pity anyone of that sort she may encounter. They have no understanding what the woman is capable of."

I did agree in that regard. I had witnessed her taking down a street thief who had the misguided ambition to relieve her of her handbag when she was leaving after dining with old friends. When the confrontation was over the young man needed several stitches at hospital before being take to the Yard.

A revolver in the hands of a determined eighty-six-year-old woman?

From that moment on, whenever my great-aunt was out and about, she was accompanied by a tall, fierce-looking Scot with that sharp blue gaze that was much like staring into a glacial abyss.

" Entirely unnecessary ," she had declared. "However, he does have the ladies in quite a stir when he is about. Fascinating to see."

It was therefore arranged that Munro would accompany Lily, my great-aunt, and me to the cabaret the following evening.