The Bockhampton Road Murders Read online

  THE BOCKHAMPTON ROAD

  MURDERS

  A Reverend Paltoquet

  Supernatural Murder Mystery

  by

  Pat Herbert

  Sometimes we’re not alone….

  OTHER NOVELS IN THE

  REVEREND PALTOQUET MYSTERY SERIES:

  Haunted Christmas

  The Possession of November Jones

  The Witches of Wandsworth

  So Long at the Fair

  The Man Who Was Death

  The Dark Side of the Mirror

  Sleeping With the Dead

  The Corpse Wore Red

  Seeing Double

  THE BARNEY CARMICHAEL

  CRIME SERIES

  Getting Away With Murder

  The Murder in Weeping Lane

  The Mop and Bucket Murders

  Also by Pat Herbert:

  Death Comes Gift Wrapped

  Published by New Publications

  Copyright © Pat Herbert 2018

  Second Edition

  The author asserts the moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form without the prior consent of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.

  Prologue

  London, March 2010

  Reverend Bernard Paltoquet sighed. It had taken him many years to discover the truth behind the tragic events in that insignificant South London terraced house, but at last his work was done.

  The mystery behind the series of violent deaths in 57 Bockhampton Road which had taken place sporadically ever since the late 1890s, had finally been solved. Justice had failed to be done over the intervening years, and justice couldn’t right the wrong, even now. He wanted, more than anything, to clear the names of the innocent and put the blame fairly and squarely where it belonged. But he knew he wouldn’t be believed. He had found it hard to believe himself.

  He put the file aside; the final sheets inserted. The sheets that supplied the missing information, that told everything. Dorothy Plunkett had lost none of her psychic powers, despite her advanced years. If it hadn’t been for her, the truth would still be hidden. He owed her a great deal tonight.

  Rising from his desk, he switched off the reading lamp and poured himself a brandy. He made his way from the study to the cosy living room where the fire was brightly, if artificially, burning. No more open coal fires these days; time and tide and smoke-free zones had seen to that. But it cast a warm glow around the room, nevertheless.

  He glanced up at the clock on the mantelpiece. Nearly midnight. He was very tired, and the thought of climbing the stairs to his bedroom was making him feel even more tired. He was feeling his age these days, it wasn’t to be denied. He would be asleep before his head hit the pillow. Tonight, he would sleep the sleep of the dead, his mind free at last from the horrors that had haunted it for so long.

  But, as he climbed the stairs, he heard the clock chime the witching hour, and a shiver went up his spine.

  PART ONE

  57 Bockhampton Road

  London SW

  August 1896

  My dear Isabelle

  Thank you for your letter of the 4th inst. I must apologise for the delay in replying but, as I am sure you can understand, I have been a trifle busy of late.

  Your kind wishes and support mean very much to me, as I’m sure you know. They have supported me in this time of trial, and given me the strength to carry on. It has not been easy, and I know you are worried for me. I will not deny that it has crossed my mind, but I cannot accept that it is the only answer. There has been enough misery caused so far without my adding to it. Besides, it is a sin against God and my own vocation.

  My grateful thanks to you for your kind suggestion that I come and stay with you all, but I must decline. You have enough to do with Arthur and the children. You do not need me to add to your burden.

  I was sorry you had to say in your letter what you did about Edith. I do not believe she could be such a monster as you suggest. Until I find her and find out what happened, I will not judge her. What she has done or not done, we will not know until she can answer for herself. And I pray that one day I will see her again and learn the truth, however painful it may be.

  I will close now. The shadows are longer, and the nights are beginning to draw in. I am expecting Sergeant Cobb shortly. He has become a dear friend to me. I believe he, too, thinks I will do away with myself and he comes in the evenings quite often now to make sure I am still in the land of the living. We play chess and drink whisky together, so I have some comfort.

  Give my love to Arthur and the boys and tell them I am grateful to them for sending their kind wishes with your last letter. It has meant so much to me that you are all thinking of me.

  Your loving brother,

  Herbert

  1

  Edith Lomax sat at her dressing table, staring into the mirror. The face that stared back at her was very pleasing. She smiled as she brushed her abundant blonde hair. She never tired of admiring herself. Her blue eyes were deep, unfathomable pools and her heart-shaped face was perfectly symmetrical. In fact, the sort of woman the Pre-Raphaelite painters loved to paint. She had often regretted not being born some fifty years earlier because she was sure Rossetti would have been only too eager to put her down on canvas.

  But she was born too late for the fame of her beauty to be immortalised in art galleries. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais and all the others had long since ceased to paint. She was feeling sorry for herself. Never one to count her blessings, she could only see the negative things in her life: married to a respectable, but dull, man and required to live in a small, terraced house indistinguishable from all the others in the street. Her neighbours might be content to live such a squalid existence, but Edith Lomax considered herself above the run of the ordinary and, by that token, deserved something much better. At least, she supposed, Herbert was well-respected in the neighbourhood, being a doctor, which gave her some reflected kudos. But she couldn’t forgive him for providing her with two daughters, grounding her completely in a humdrum existence she wasn’t fitted for.

  She had no means of escape. She was doomed to sit at home, waiting for her husband to return in the evenings for his supper and pipe, while she toiled over some senseless sampler that she had no interest in and didn’t know what to do with when it was finished.

  Their young parlour maid, Martha Finch, did most of the housework and cooking, so she didn’t even have these mundane chores to keep her busy. She needed to get out of the house. It was summer, and she was young and beautiful. She wanted other people, especially the men amongst them, to appreciate her qualities. Her two little daughters were quite content in the care of Martha, so there was no need to stay cooped up with them all the time. Instead, she could leave them at home and parade up and down the high street, ostensibly looking in the shop windows to admire all the pretty things on display. She never had enough in her purse to buy anything, however, as Herbert, possibly aware of his wife’s penchant for overspending, only gave her enough housekeeping money for daily essentials. He even made her keep a record of her expenditures. Every penny had to be accounted for in his house.

  

  Martha didn’t mind looking after her mistress’s children, but couldn’t understand how she could leave them all day long in her care. She never paid the poor mites any attention, only occasionally looking in at the nursery door to make sure they
were playing properly and not making a nuisance of themselves. Dr Lomax was different. He loved his little girls. When he came home from visiting his patients, he would spend at least an hour in the nursery with them. But Edith never stayed longer than she could help. It was as if the poor little mites bored her which, Martha supposed, they probably did.

  She had long ceased to be shocked by her mistress’s callous behaviour, not only towards her children, but towards her husband who, thought Martha, didn’t deserve it any more than the kids did.

  “You going out on your own again, madam?” she would ask Edith when she saw that lady adjust her hat in front of the hall mirror. “Won’t you take the girls with you? They could do with some exercise.” Which was true if the cacophony from the nursery was anything to go by.

  “Oh, don’t be difficult, Martha. The children much prefer your company to mine. I’m just going to the park for a little constitutional. The weather is so fine. Then maybe I will have a look around the shops. You can take them out, can’t you?”

  “Very well, madam.”

  Martha supposed Edith’s solo jaunts were innocent enough. Knowing how vain she was, her little maidservant assumed she just wanted people to admire her. Anyway, it was none of her business what her silly mistress got up to.

  2

  Abraham Smollett never failed to make an impression on the fairer sex. With his luxuriant moustaches, broad shoulders, handsome, leonine face, piercing grey eyes and dazzling smile, he was a romantic, almost Byronic figure. The only thing missing was the limp.

  When Edith Lomax first met him, she was staring at a pretty hat in the haberdasher’s window just off the high street. The sun was reflecting off the window glass, as a shadow loomed up behind her. She turned and, shielding her eyes, she saw a very handsome young man smiling at her. He raised his hat.

  “Please excuse me,” he said, politeness personified. “I believe I am blocking your path.”

  Edith blushed. “Oh no indeed. Not at all. It is I, I believe, who obstruct your way.”

  “Oh, but what a delightful obstruction!”

  She twirled her parasol nervously. He was being all too familiar, and she tried very hard to be annoyed. But how grand he was, she thought. And rich! He looked the sort of man who wouldn’t keep his wife short of money. He would take her to all the best West End shops and insist she bought whatever she wanted. She, of course, had no way of knowing if this was so but, her habit of comparing every man she met to her dull husband, always made him seem like a paragon of his sex.

  “May I walk with you a little way?” she heard him ask, as she struggled to control her blushes. “I believe we are going in the same direction.”

  “Well, I....” she began. Then she managed to collect herself. “I believe we are not acquainted, sir?”

  Abraham Smollett didn’t seem in the least abashed. “I do apologise,” he said at once. “I’m afraid I was so overcome by your dazzling beauty that I....”

  “You forget yourself, sir!” declared Edith, feigning an anger she didn’t in the least feel. She wondered how long she should keep up the pretence. Besides, she didn’t want to put him off altogether.

  “Oh dear, I seem to have offended you again,” he said. “I did not intend to be so forward.”

  Edith, already tired of being an affronted female, allowed herself to mellow towards him a little. “I am not used to being accosted in this manner by strange men in the street.”

  Abraham acknowledged her scolding with a rueful smile. “I only wish we were acquainted. If I introduce myself and you do the same, then we won’t be unacquainted anymore, will we?”

  Edith hid a smile behind her fan. “There is no gainsaying that,” she agreed.

  “Abraham Smollett at your service,” he informed her.

  She responded in kind, and he lost no time in taking her gloved hand in his. Bending over it, he feigned a kiss. “Now that we are acquainted, will you do me the honour of taking tea with me?”

  “Well...” she hesitated. “The day is quite warm, and I am a little thirsty. I was, in fact, thinking of resting awhile in the tea shop.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Abraham happily. “That discreet little place just around the corner...”

  Edith asserted herself once again. This man was really very trying. Did he have no sense of what was proper in good society?

  “I cannot see why we need to be ‘discreet’.” The horse she was on now had never been higher.

  “I only meant that it was secluded and quiet, where we can sit and take tea together unmolested. After all, it is a perfectly innocent pastime, don’t you agree?”

  “I only agreed to have tea with you because I am in need of refreshment and that is all.”

  “Then, please take my arm,” said Abraham. He cocked his elbow, and she tentatively rested her hand on it. All this standing on ceremony had made her tired.

  The little tea shop was, as Abraham Smollett had said, discreet, almost hidden as it was between a butcher’s and a bookshop in a shady side street. But Edith’s conscience once again asserted itself. She was having a cup of tea with this man because she was thirsty, and that was all. Of course, Martha could make her a perfectly good cup of tea at home. Martha, however, wasn’t Abraham Smollett.

  There were several other couples already seated in the tea shop as they entered. There were also some older women, enjoying a mid-morning chat over coffee and scones. Edith recognised two of them at once. As they sat down at a table by the window, Edith whispered to Abraham behind her fan. “That’s Mrs Glossop and Mrs Redmayne over in the corner by the cake trolley,” she told him. “They know who I am! You must act as if you are my brother or cousin or some such. On no account are you to behave as if you were courting me.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of embarrassing you,” he grinned. “As far as I am concerned I’m your long-lost brother returned from planting rubber in Malaya.”

  “Yes, that will do. Anyway, there’s no help for it. They’ve seen me, so I must introduce you. Come.” She led him to the older women’s table.

  “Hello, Mrs Glossop. Mrs Redmayne. I hope you’re both well and have no need of my husband’s ministrations,” she said ingratiatingly.

  Both ladies smiled at her. Were their smiles sincere? she wondered. “Hello, Mrs Lomax,” said the one called Mrs Glossop. “We are both very well, thank you, dear. But tell me, who is this young gentleman? We don’t believe we’ve seen him before?”

  “This gentleman is my brother, er – Paul. He has just returned from Malaya. He has been planting rubber.”

  After politely shaking hands with the two women, Abraham led Edith back to their table. He raised an elegant eyebrow at the waitress who was staring straight at him in undisguised admiration, and she scuttled over to their table. He ordered tea and cakes for two, and she scuttled away again.

  “Oh dear,” sighed Edith. “I do not think those women believed you were my brother at all.”

  He only smiled as the waitress returned with the tea. He poured out the Earl Grey carefully, and the scent of bergamot seemed very heady to her at that moment. She sipped the tea slowly, looking into his eyes. What did it matter if they didn’t believe he was her brother? She cared little for the Glossops and Redmaynes of this world, anyway. But she did care about her reputation all the same.

  3

  Edith lowered her gaze. She had been meeting Abraham surreptitiously for several weeks, always trying to avoid the places where she was likely to bump into people she knew. Her husband had looked at her strangely one evening but had said nothing. Edith had asked him coyly if he had seen any of their friends or acquaintances lately. She remembered how he had avoided her eyes as he answered that Mrs Glossop had consulted him the other day about a bad back. Something that was impossible to prove, she had thought grimly. “Apart from her back, was she all right?” she had then asked him.

  “As right as she’ll ever be,” Herbert had laughed.

  She hadn’t pursued the conversation b
ut knew Herbert had been made aware that his “brother-in-law” was back from Malaya, and probably how handsome he was. Perhaps he didn’t believe what he had been told. Herbert despised gossip-mongers, she knew. Or, maybe, more likely, he didn’t want to believe it. Either way, he hadn’t raised the matter with her.

  As the summer progressed, Edith was enjoying her meetings with Abraham more and more. It was all very innocent; they had held hands, taken tea together, strolled around the park, and he had even managed to steal a little kiss or two. But, lately, he was becoming more demanding. It was inevitable, she supposed. In her heart of hearts, she didn’t want to take their relationship any further than this pleasant dalliance, but she knew she would be obliged to hold out some hope for him or lose him altogether.

  

  August was proving to be even warmer than July. But the flush in her face wasn’t entirely due to the heat as she sat at her dressing table brushing her hair with vigour. She was vaguely aware her husband was talking to her.

  “I’m taking the whole day off, dear. Why don’t we take the children to the zoo?”

  She had no intention of going anywhere near Regent’s Park. She had other plans today. “You take them, Herbert,” she said. “I have a headache.”

  “Oh dear, I am sorry. You do seem a little flushed,” he said. He felt her forehead, which was indeed hot and clammy. “I’ll make up a powder for you.”

  “Don’t bother,” she snapped tersely. Why was he always so nice to her? “I just need to rest.”