Leaving Everything Most Loved Page 4

  “It might be to do with the color. I remember Maurice telling me that it opens up another part of the brain. Recalling all those saris and the explosion of color was the key that unlocked the treasure chest with that particular memory.” She turned to her assistant. “Billy, remember that. Remember the color. I’ll ask Caldwell about the sari Usha was wearing when her body was discovered—we can get some similar fabric. It might help people remember.”

  “I’d better be off then, Miss. Got a lot to do today.”

  “Any luck with that other case, the missing boy?”

  “Not a lot yet, though I spoke to his teacher and apparently he had a great interest in the sea. I hate to think of it, but if I was that age and I wanted to do a runner, I might try to jump on one of them ships setting off from the docks.”

  “Well, keep on it, just in case. “ She looked at her notes, then at Billy and Sandra. “Right then, let’s have a discussion after our meeting with Major Pramal tomorrow morning. We should have a lot to add to the map for Usha Pramal by then.”

  Sandra began putting the crayons away and folding the case map. “Funny name, isn’t it? Usha? Does it mean anything?”

  Maisie nodded. “Most names from the subcontinent mean something—just as English names have a meaning, or French names. And that’s something I remembered, when you were talking about the woman with the saris. I remembered—it was years ago now, when I was studying with Maurice—learning about different mythologies. Hindu mythology was a subject all on its own and could keep you busy for your entire life, I think. But I remember Usha. She was the goddess of the dawn; she was considered to be the Daughter of Heaven.”

  “Right, Miss Dobbs, sit yourself down. Sorry I can’t offer you a cup of tea, but we don’t have time for that sort of thing.” Caldwell looked at Maisie. “On account of the criminals.”

  “Not to worry, Inspector—I had my fill this morning, and I am sure we kept you from the brink of thirst.”

  Caldwell rolled his eyes, a mannerism that seemed to be the inspector’s signature reaction to almost any comment with which he had no truck. He pushed a folder towards her. It was a folder that had been previously used for another case or two; the edges were frayed and torn, and as she opened the cover, she could see a series of names crossed out inside the flap.

  “Commissioner cut your stationery allowance?” asked Maisie.

  Caldwell sighed. “I shouldn’t be mentioning it to you, but it’s the bean counters, coming round and checking how we’re using everything from a pencil to a pin.” He nodded towards the notes in Maisie’s hands. “To tell you the truth, I feel sorry for the woman. Even the examiner said she was a beauty. Taller than some of them. Bob Carter was in India, with the army, and he said she would have been of a higher caste, or with a bit of Anglo in her, he thought. But there again, she was living in that home for servants.”

  “It might have been the only place for her to go—she had been taken on as a governess. How long had she been dead when she was discovered?”

  “About twenty-four hours, according to the postmortem report.”

  “Had her body been brought to the canal? Were there any signs of her death along the canal path? The summer’s been dry for the most part, so there would have been blood on the ground if she’d been shot nearby.”

  Caldwell shook his head. “I had men walking up and down that path looking at the dirt and gravel until they couldn’t move their necks for a week. Nothing.”

  “So, she was carried there?”

  He nodded. “I would have thought so.”

  “Not easy to lift, a dead weight,” said Maisie.

  “Unless there were two doing the carrying.”

  “Were there distinct footprints?”

  Again, Caldwell shook his head. “Someone was very careful, I reckon. Could have shot her next to the canal, so she just fell in when the bullet hit her.”

  Maisie sat back and regarded the inspector, the way he fiddled with a piece of paper on his desk and avoided meeting her eyes. He feels guilty, she thought. He didn’t do the job as well as he could have, and he knows it.

  “What else did you discover? And I know I could read all this, but what might you have found out about Usha Pramal that you were keeping from her brother?”

  Caldwell sighed. He looked up at Maisie, then came to his feet to stand alongside the small soot-stained window through which sun would never shine into his office.

  “We have evidence to suggest she was a prostitute.”

  Maisie frowned. “Are you sure?”

  “We talked to people in the area, and from all accounts she was seen with men.”

  “I’m seen with men, Inspector, but I hope no one thinks ill of me.”

  “But not her sort. It’s not on for them, is it? Seen going into houses to see men.”

  “Are you sure? Was she seen going into a house to see one man, but five people saw it? Or was she really seen going into different houses?”

  The detective sat down again. “I admit, a bit of doubt crept in. She was never seen out at night—we talked to the warden at the ayah’s hostel, and she said Miss Pramal was always in of a night. Rules, you see. But she was out during the day. According to the warden, she always had some money—not lots, mind, but she had some sort of work outside what was organized for her. Most of them work as cleaners, anything they can get.” He paused. “And there’s no two ways about it, a lot of these women who were given their marching orders by the people who brought them over here have ended up on the streets, especially down by the docks. They find their own kind there, see. Lascars—Indian sailors.”

  Maisie chewed the inside of her lip. “Poor souls probably didn’t have much choice. What kind of people would bring a young woman from her home—so different from this country—then cast her out when they no longer had need of her services?”

  “They didn’t all do that. When I spoke to the warden, Mrs. Paige, she said a fair number had their passage paid to go back home. And there’s cases of these ayahs’ getting a new job straightaway and coming right back again with another family.”

  “Then why is there an ayah’s hostel?”

  “Well, you’ve got a point there, Miss Dobbs. Mrs. Paige and her husband—churchgoers, they are, very religious—said they felt they had to help these women. Started when Mrs. Paige came across an Indian woman begging on a street corner, so she got talking to her and realized what had happened—lost her job, and had nowhere to go. She brought her home, gave her room and board in return for work, and she discovered that there were more who needed that sort of help. Of course, they couldn’t keep them all, it gets expensive, with so many mouths to feed, so they went to their vicar, scrounged every penny they could from their fellow parishioners, and they turned their house into a hostel. They had the room after all, it’s a big house. They’ve got enough beds to accommodate twelve women on three upper floors. The Paiges have the ground floor, turned it into a nice flat for themselves.”

  “That’s very generous.”

  “Like I said, they’re religious.”

  “I’ll see them as soon as I can.”

  “Of course you will.”

  Maisie looked at Caldwell. “What’s happened on this case, Inspector? You started off according to the book—a quick glance here tells me you began everything in line with correct procedures—securing the area where Pramal was discovered, conducting a search along the canal, speaking to associates, locals in the area who might have seen the woman. Then very little follows.”

  He shrugged. “It went cold. We hit a brick wall with nothing new coming in, and there were other cases pending. Life’s not getting any easier around here, you know. There were no relatives banging on my door every day, and word came from a bit higher up to leave it alone and get on with more pressing cases.”

  “And a gunshot wound to the head is not pressing? Was the bullet identified?”

  “Went straight through the skull, out the other side.” He sighed. “
And no, we couldn’t find it. There is a best guess, though—Fred Constantine, the pathologist on the case, said he could well be off his mark, but he couldn’t help but think it was a Webley Mark IV revolver. Standard issue to British officers in the war.”

  “And officers from Empire armies.”

  “Yes. And Empire armies.”

  “And it needs a practiced hand, I seem to remember,” said Maisie. “Otherwise it jumps as it’s fired.”

  “That’s right. Good little pistol—had one myself. But in the war we kept our eyes out for a Luger, if we found a dead German. Nice little prize to get yourself, that.” Caldwell shrugged.

  “But you had to relinquish your pistol when you were demobilized, didn’t you?”

  “I did. Yes. But you know as well as I do, Miss Dobbs, not all were handed back, and anyone who wants to arm themselves will find a way.”

  Maisie nodded, lifted the folder, and placed it in her briefcase. “I’ll go through this and get in touch if I have any questions.”

  They stood at the same time, the two chairs being pushed back making a scraping sound across the floor. They shook hands.

  “I’ll get my sergeant to see you out.”

  “Thank you, Inspector Caldwell.”

  Caldwell reached forward and opened the door for Maisie to depart the room.

  “I’m sure it’s all in here, Inspector,” said Maisie, tapping the document case where she had placed the file. “But can you tell me exactly when Mr. Pramal was informed of his sister’s death?”

  “As soon as we got the details from the Paiges. I sent a telegram to the police in Bombay, and they found him quite quickly—working somewhere else at the time, he was.”

  “And then he came over straightaway?”

  Caldwell nodded.

  “And now he’s staying in a hotel here. That can’t be much fun.”

  “Well, he was with an old mucker, from his army days,” said Caldwell, summoning his sergeant with a wave of his hand.

  “He told me he lodged with a friend for a short time.”

  “Yes, he did, Miss Dobbs,” said Caldwell. “And he is very well thought of, according to Mr. Singh—that’s his friend. He said the Sarn’t Major’s men would have done anything for him, in the war. Anything.”

  Maisie nodded and smiled, holding her hand out to Caldwell. She would find out herself if Usha Pramal’s brother was no longer staying with the friend who would do anything for him, simply because it became an inconvenience.

  Maisie looked at her watch. Billy and Sandra would both have left the office by now, so she decided to make her way back to Ebury Place and the mansion where she lived—though she still thought of it as “stayed”—with James Compton. Compton was not her husband, or her fiancé, though he was open about his desire to be married to Maisie. Her friend Priscilla Partridge, whom she had known since she was seventeen years of age and a new student at Girton College in 1914, continued to press her to make up her mind; yet even she knew that Maisie’s foot-dragging was due to not one but several threads of reticence. The difference in background between Maisie and James was one, despite the fact that Maisie was now a woman of considerable wealth following the death of her longtime mentor, Dr. Maurice Blanche. Maisie had a successful business, and had worked hard to establish herself as a professional woman—she did not relish relinquishing that independence to become a society matron. James Compton had promised her that he would not expect such an outcome, though it was already clear he was not happy with the risks inherent in her work. But more than anything, Maisie had established within herself a strength, a sense of her own worth, and an independence. At the same time, though she had long recovered from the wounds of war—wounds of both body and mind—there were times when the ice still felt thin beneath her feet, and she retained a fear that she might crash through into the cold waters of her most terrible memories if events conspired to make her fall. She feared that in marrying she might give up that essential part of herself, the resilience that kept her skating above the ice. Fortunately, Maisie was not the only woman of her day who had chosen a looser relationship than marriage might have offered, and she knew that, for now, James Compton’s love for her and his fear of losing her outweighed his need to be married—and more important, to produce an heir to the Compton estate.

  “Miss Dobbs, welcome home.” The butler, Simmonds, held out his hand for Maisie’s coat, which she slipped from her shoulders. He handed the coat to the maid as he continued to address Maisie. “Viscount Compton has telephoned to say he may be a little late, and would you please dine without him this evening.”

  “Oh, I see—yes, I think he had some visitors from abroad at the offices today. I daresay he’s taken them to his club.” She pulled off her gloves and unpinned her hat, which the maid reached out to take from her; the presence of a maid assigned to her service was something that still occasionally took Maisie by surprise. She handed the hat and gloves to the young woman. “Thank you, Madeleine.” She turned back to the butler. “In that case, I think I’ll just have something on a tray in the library. Soup with some bread and cheese would be just the ticket.”

  “Cook has prepared your favorite, Miss Dobbs—oxtail soup.”

  “Thank you, Simmonds. In about half an hour.”

  “Very good, Miss Dobbs.” He gave a short bow.

  Maisie made her way upstairs, pleased that the staff had finally become used to the fact that she abhorred being referred to as “mu’um” or some other strangled form of “madam.” She had uttered the word often when she herself was a member of the belowstairs staff in this same grand mansion, and did not care to be addressed in such a fashion.

  James had taken her to task, pointing out that she was making the staff feel uncomfortable, but Priscilla had told her that she shouldn’t worry about it, observing, “You know your trouble, Maisie—you care too much.”

  After supper, she set her tray to one side, then moved to an armchair close to the open French windows that led into the gardens. Michaelmas daisies danced in the cool air, contrasting with the burnished colors of autumn leaves waiting to loosen and fall, and their green neighbors yet to change. And she wondered about Usha Pramal, a young Indian woman, far from home, yet always smiling. She wondered about her independence of spirit, and how that might have upset those who knew her as a girl—a girl who, like Maisie, had lost her mother at an early age. She closed her eyes and brought to mind the scene described by Sandra, at the lecture she attended in Camberwell. It wasn’t the image of colorful silks draped across Usha’s dark skin that drew her attention, but rather Sandra’s description of the lecturer’s reaction to the woman’s touch when the lecture had ended, as if a precious element remained on his skin.

  Yes, she would see the man as soon as she could, she would find out what it was he felt in his hand. She wasn’t sure why, but she thought his might be valuable information, an insight to what it was that Usha Pramal carried inside her, and perhaps something of her essence.

  She’s a Camberwell Beauty, if ever I saw one. Maisie reflected upon Sandra’s recollection of her friend’s description of the murdered Indian woman. She walked over to the stacks of books in the library, a library that had grown over the years—though it had seemed full to overflowing even in the days of her girlhood, when she would steal downstairs at night to read and read and read, in an effort to quench her thirst for learning. She knew this library like the back of her hand. She ran her fingers over the spines of books and soon found what she was looking for. It was a tea card book, a collection of palm-size cards from boxes of tea, pasted in by James Compton when he was just a boy. “Butterflies & Moths of the World” was inscribed in his childish handwriting. She flipped through until she reached the one she was looking for: The Camberwell Beauty. She had simply wanted to look at an image of the butterfly, curious, for she could not remember what it looked like. It wasn’t a butterfly often seen in Britain, let alone London. More accustomed to the climates of Asia and North America,
it was the discovery of two of the butterflies in Coldharbour Lane in Camberwell in the mid-1700s that led to the local name. With soft wings of deep purplish red decorated with small blue dots and rimmed by a yellow border, the butterfly was at once elegant and mystical. Maisie felt her skin prickle when she read the more common name for the Camberwell Beauty: the Mourning Cloak. It was not a clue, not an element of great import to her investigation, but there was something in the picture before her that touched her heart. That something beautiful was so bold, yet at once so fragile.

  Chapter Four

  “I promise, I won’t be home quite so late this evening, Maisie.” James Compton cut into a slice of toast, spreading it liberally with butter and marmalade. “It was that meeting with Tom Hollingford, you know, the architect working on those houses we’re building in Bromley. It just went on and on, and at the end of the day, it was all about apple trees.”

  Maisie placed her table napkin beside her plate and glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. She wanted to leave for the office and prepare for the meeting with Usha Pramal’s brother. “Apple trees, James?”

  “Well, you know the entire area was once apple orchards—all down to Henry the Eighth and his desire for an abundant supply of fresh fruit in days of yore. Anyway, what we are trying to do is retain at least one apple tree in each garden. Keep a bit of the past lurking in the present. And it’s proving to be a bit of a pain in the neck. Hollingford wants to just plough the whole lot in, though I believe we should keep as much as we can—it’s good for public opinion. We don’t want to be seen as a raze-and-build firm, and there are some very big contracts, here and overseas, that will come our way if we get it right. It’s always so much easier when permission to build goes through the local council without too much ado, and that’s more likely to happen if people are happy about what’s going in.”