Chapter Three
“I always thought women in India were sort of tied to the house until they married,” commented Sandra, while marking the name “Pramal” on a fresh cream-colored folder. “Then we had this woman—a visiting lecturer—come along to talk to the class last week. She’s been standing in for someone else. A doctor, she is—not medical, but of something else; history, I think, or perhaps politics. It was a history class anyway. She was talking about imperialism and about Mr. Gandhi, and what was happening in India, and how it would affect Britain. Very sharp, she was. Kept us all listening, not like some of them.”
Sandra continued talking as Maisie looked down at a page where she, too, had marked a name: Usha Pramal.
“Not that there was any reason for her not to be intelligent, mind,” Sandra went on. “But you know, I was surprised to see an Indian woman there, teaching us. She was very, very good—better than most of the men, I have to say.”
“It seems Usha Pramal was of her ilk—her brother’s description reveals an educated woman with an independence of character,” said Maisie. She looked up. “Do you have her name—your lecturer? I think I might like to see her, have a word with her; she could have some valuable information for us, perhaps, regarding Indian women here in London.”
“She’ll be giving the lecture tomorrow evening. I’ve forgotten her name now, but I can find out when I get there.”
“Thank you, Sandra.” Maisie paused. “If it can be arranged, I would like to meet her—at this point, I think any information will be useful, even if it is removed from the case, but it could shed light on how Usha Pramal might have lived. I fear more time has elapsed on this case than I would have wanted. Evidence will be thin, and we’ll be dependent upon the opinions and observations of people who might well have worked hard at forgetting whatever they knew about Miss Pramal. We need to draw in as much background information as we can.”
Billy returned to the room, smiling at Sandra, then at Maisie. “Nice bloke, eh?”
“Yes, a very good man I think, Billy,” said Maisie, standing up. “Let’s all take a seat by the window and get a case map started. I’ll be bringing back more information after I’ve seen Caldwell this afternoon.”
Billy took a roll of wallpaper, cut a length, and unfurled it upside down across the table, where he and Sandra pinned it in place. The wallpaper had been given to them by a painter and decorator friend of Billy’s, who often had surplus from his paper-hanging job. Maisie placed a jar of colored crayons on the table—some of thick wax in bold primary colors, others fine pencils in more muted shades. She took a bright red wax crayon and wrote Usha Pramal in the center of the paper, circling the name. This was the beginning, the half-open shell in what would become a tide pool of ideas, thoughts, random opinions; of words that came to mind unbidden; and of threads connecting evidence gathered. Some of it would make sense, though much of it wouldn’t, but eventually something on the map, often one small buried clue, would point them to the killer. And a terrier could always find something buried, if she’d caught the scent.
“Billy, we need to find the exact point on the Surrey Canal where the body was discovered. I’ll get more information from Caldwell; however, in the meantime, I don’t want to depend upon it, so would you go down to Camberwell, find out where she was found on the canal. Talk to anyone who might have witnessed something—remember, people would love to forget this, so carefully does it.” She sighed. “Mind you, on the other hand, there are probably a few gossips who’d enjoy nothing more than a good old chin-wag about a murder. In any case, could you also find out about movements on the canal that might have taken the body along. I believe timber is transported back and forth to the works there, from Greenland Docks or Rotherhithe—can you find out and ask around? See if any of the dockworkers saw anything of interest to us, or if anyone knows someone who did?” Maisie pushed back her chair, and went to her desk, where she took a camera from a large desk drawer. “Use this. There’s film in the box, and it’s easy to operate—heaven knows, if I can take a photograph, anyone can! I have a neighbor who has a darkroom in his flat, so he’ll get them developed for us, and he’s quite quick about it.” She handed the box containing her pawnshop purchase across the table to Billy—a Number Two C Autographic Camera, manufactured by the Eastman Kodak Company. “Study the instructions for a few minutes. I think it will help us to have some photographs of the area.”
Billy nodded. “Right you are, Miss. We should use this a lot more, I can see it being handy for our cases.”
“Keep it in your desk drawer—I can always grab it if I need it. Anyway, back to Usha Pramal: though we’ll have names later, Billy, root out what you can about the boys who found the body—they were messing around along the canal path, probably getting up to harmless mischief. Now they’ll probably have nightmares for years, poor little mites. Anyway, Billy, you’re a father of boys, so you will know how to deal with them.”
“It’s our girl who’s going to need dealing with, I can see it coming already. Nearly a year old and breaking hearts already.”
“They always say that about the girls, but it’s the boys who break the hearts,” said Sandra.
“Not if I’ve got anything to do with it—no one will break my little girl’s heart.”
“I’m sure they won’t, Billy,” said Maisie, turning to her secretary. “Sandra, you said you thought you might have seen Miss Pramal before—have you had any recollection?”
Sandra shook her head. “I wish I had, Miss. At first I thought I might have seen her—and I’m sorry I nearly said it in front of her brother, but they all sort of look the same, when they’re from somewhere else like that. You know, your Chinese, your Indians. I’m sure you can see the differences if you live there and you’re used to the faces, but when you only see them now and again, you can’t always tell. That sounds really terrible, but, well, I think a lot of people get confused like that.”
Maisie sat back in her chair, tapping the crayon on paper, creating a series of dots. “You know, that might be something for us to bear in mind—what if Usha was not the intended victim? What if someone just got it wrong, and thought she was another person?” She looked up at Sandra. “It’s a sad reflection upon us, if we’re that insular. After all, we’ve all nations under Britain’s roof and it’s not as if we’re short of people from other continents, here in London.” She leaned forward and wrote “mistaken identity?” on the wallpaper, circled the words and then linked them with a line to Usha’s name.
Sandra spoke again. “It’s not that I go to many places in a day—I go from here to Mr. Partridge’s office, or the house, or I go to classes at Morley College, or to Birkbeck—and I go back to my flat. I think I’ve only ever been to Camberwell once or twice, even though one of my friends I share the flat with goes to the art college there.” She frowned, then looked at Maisie, her eyes wide. “Hold on a minute—I think I know where I saw her. Well, it might not have been her, as I said, but . . . about four months ago, must have been in May or thereabouts, my friend asked me to go with her to one of the lectures; open to the public, it was. The talk was all about colors and how things feel—textures, and that sort of thing. The lecturer had people helping him—it was all very interesting, I must say—and he was showing pictures these different artists had painted, and their sculptures, and what have you, and then he talked about color and places, so she—if it was her—came onto the podium with this pile of saris, all these lengths of silk in different colors, and she opened one up after another, and draped them over her arms. I remember her standing there, like a goddess, she was, clothed in all these colors. Your eyes could hardly stand it.”
“And you think this assistant was Usha Pramal?” Maisie picked up the photograph, now some years old and torn at the edges. She handed it to Sandra.
The young woman frowned, and began to nibble the nail on the middle finger of her left hand. “Oh, dear—I can only say it looks like her, because I remember the woman smiling, really smiling, as if she’d turned into a butterfly. My friend was thinking the same thing, because she whispered in my ear, ‘She’s a Camberwell Beauty, if ever I saw one.’ You know, the butterfly, the Camberwell Beauty?” Sandra paused. “I couldn’t swear on the Bible in a court of law, Miss, but I am halfway positive that it was her.”
“Any chance that your friend will remember the name of the lecturer?”
“I’ll ask her tonight.”
Maisie nodded, and was about to put a question to Billy when Sandra spoke again.
“I remember him as if it were yesterday, though I couldn’t tell you his name.”
“Why? What was it about him that stuck in your memory?”
“You could tell he’d been wounded, in the war. There were scars on his face, and he had a bit of a limp; used a cane.”
“That’s a fair description of almost all of us who went over there,” said Billy.
She shook her head. “Now I’m remembering—and I still don’t know for definite if it was her. But I remember the way he was talking, and he ran his hand along one of the saris she held over her arm, and she smiled this big smile at him. Then afterwards, he was helping her to fold the saris as we were all filing out—and it was slow going, what with people stopping to talk and picking up their things; the line was moving like treacle off a cold spoon. When they’d finished, the Indian woman went to shake his hand—which I thought was very bold of her, I mean, to hold out her hand like that. He looked at her hand as if it were something very precious he was being offered, and at the point where their fingers touched, she took his hand in both of hers. Then, when he turned away—the Indian woman was by now talking to some women that my friend said were students studying embroidery—he looked at his hand and rubbed it, as if he’d touched something warm.” Sandra looked at Maisie, frowning. “I don’t understand that, how one minute you can be sorting things out in your brain, looking for something you’ve lost, then the next thing, the memory comes rushing in.”
“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.