One of the Family Read online

  Apprentices, sales ladies, floorwalkers, clerks, window dressers, upholsterers, tailors, seamstresses, van drivers, butchers, confectioners – everyone was thrown out of orbit, confused, shocked and afraid, talking, arguing, crying, unable to make a move towards home.

  What will happen? Will they hang him? I hope they do. Nothing will be the same now. It feels like the end of the world ... What will happen to us?

  The assassination of the Universal Provider was like the murder of God himself.

  Leonard Morley stayed with the detectives who were searching the office for possible evidence. Later, Arthur French joined them. He said that the man with the Colt revolver, who was still alive and undergoing surgery to remove fragments of dumdum bullet from his head and face, had given his name as Whiteley, although that was established as not true, and that Sir George Lewis denied all knowledge of him. No clues about the fatal interview were found, no relevant papers. The suicide note, clutched in Leonard’s hand as he ran to the scene of the shooting, was in the inside pocket of his coat.

  After the office was locked and police posted inside and outside the building, Inspector French took his friend home. In the Scotland Yard motor car, with a glass screen between the back seat and the constable driver, Leonard said to Arthur, ‘I have something I must show you.’

  Two days later, Leonard, patrolling like an automaton through the ground-floor haberdashery sections, trying to restore the atmosphere of business as usual, remembered that he had not told the two sisters that their reprieve had not been granted. One of them was stretching a glove for a customer. He spoke to the other.

  ‘About your notice ...’

  ‘I understand, sir, after what has happened. Don’t trouble about us.’

  ‘No, no, I think you can stay on. I’ll explain to Miss Maple. Someone can be moved to another department. Don’t thank me.’ He held up a hand as she caught her breath. He could not face any emotion. Shocked and grieving, it was all he could do to get through the work of the day.

  On the office floor, a sad place with all the women in black and the men with mourning armbands, and a laurel wreath on the Chief’s locked door, he told Henry Beale what he had done. ‘I’ll square it with Miss Maple. Or you can,’ he said curtly.

  ‘You’ve gone against one of my buyers? Look here, Morley, I won’t have this!’ Henry’s eyes were bloodshot and his skin flushed and sticky. He had been drinking since the tragedy. Any excuse would do. ‘You shall not go against my authority,’ he blustered.

  ‘Authority,’ Leonard said wearily. ‘None of us knows what our positions are, until the new administration is sorted out with Mr William and Mr Frank and the Board.’

  ‘I know what I’m doing. As Chief Buyer of this establishment, I must insist –’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ Leonard left him.

  ‘Shut the door behind you!’

  ‘Shut it yourself, you pompous ass.’

  With both of them on edge, and the whole store disordered – customers and staff alike – this was only one of many undignified skirmishes between them.

  Four days after the tragedy, Leonard had to give evidence at Paddington coroners’ court. As a witness, or a near-witness, of the murder, he had to recount what he had seen and overheard. ‘Nothing about the notes yet,’ Arthur French had instructed him. ‘That will undoubtedly have to come up at the trial, but your duty today is simply to tell what happened.’

  Leonard hated having to stand up before the coroner and the considerable crowd that had squeezed into the courtroom. He felt as if he were on trial. ‘Take deep breaths,’ Arthur had coached him, ‘and don’t fidget guiltily from foot to foot.’

  ‘At about twelve-fifty, I entered Mr Whiteley’s office on a matter of business.’

  Dr Danford Thomas, the coroner, regarded him sternly. Rows of faces were turned to him. Reporters wrote in their notebooks. At the side, the widow, Mrs Harriet Whiteley, whom Leonard had never seen, sat between her two sons and a daughter, her ageing face expressionless behind the veil of her black velvet hat.

  When Leonard had finished his recital, which was exact – he would never forget any of the details – he felt obliged to voice the thoughts that had been churning in his mind.

  ‘I would like to add, Dr Thomas, with respect, that I am greatly troubled by guilt at having been so near to Mr – the late Mr Whiteley’s office, but not able to prevent the tragedy.’

  The courtroom was visited by a slight murmur, either of blame or sympathy.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Morley. I see no reason for that last remark to go into the records. You could not be aware that the assailant had a revolver. When the office door was opened, you were near enough to hear, but not to interfere, and after the second shot was fired, the police surgeon has given evidence that death was instantaneous.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ Leonard felt no less guilty, as he returned to his seat next to his son Austin.

  Gwen had not felt she could bear to attend the inquest, so Austin had been given the day off by his firm to be with his father. He was very serious and manly and responsible, but Leonard would rather have been with Gwen.

  The coroner’s verdict on the untimely death of Mr William Whiteley was: ‘Wilful murder.’ His assailant, having undergone intensive surgery, which included the removal of his right eye, would be charged when he was sufficiently recovered. ‘In other words,’ the Daily Mail quoted public opinion later in the week, ‘he is being nursed back to health to be tried for murder.’

  Two significant statements came from the inquest. A note scribbled on a page from a small notebook and found on the clothing of the man in hospital read,

  To all whom it may concern. William Whiteley is my father, and has brought upon himself and me a double fatality by reason of his refusal of a request perfectly reasonable. R.I.P.

  The identity of this man had by now been established as Horace George Rayner, of No. 32 Red Lion Street, Holborn. However, a statement had also been made by a man called George Rayner, who claimed to be this man’s foster father, not his father. His mother, Emily Turner, had falsely registered her infant son as Horace Rayner, although his legal name was Turner. The police reported that he persistently claimed that William Whiteley was his father, and had said, ‘I’m glad he is dead, because of the way he treated my mother.’ This last was ordered by the coroner to be struck from the record, as irrelevant to the inquest.

  Outside the court, Henry Beale accosted Austin and Leonard. ‘Startling news, eh, about Saint William?’

  ‘Shut your scurrilous mouth, Beale.’

  ‘Told you I knew a secret about him, didn’t I? I’ve known it for ages.’

  ‘There’s nothing to know. The killer is a madman. Everyone can see that.’

  ‘Everyone but me.’ Henry Beale winked, and put a finger to his florid nose.

  Leonard had turned over the anonymous notes to the detective inspector in charge of the case, to whom Arthur French was careful to defer, with a statement about what had been written on the other two letters.

  ‘Did you destroy those?’

  ‘Mr Whiteley tore up the second one and asked me to destroy the first.’

  Arthur told Leonard privately, ‘I don’t know whether the Crown Prosecutor will make the notes part of his case, as evidence of intent. If Horace Rayner denies writing them, and sticks to that, it may be difficult to prove that he did.’

  ‘Before I knew he existed, I had an idea who might be responsible.’

  ‘Who would that be?’

  ‘In confidence, Arthur, Henry Beale, the Chief Buyer at Whiteley’s. But that was an insane suspicion, festered out of my dislike of the man.’

  ‘You should know that Mr Beale has already told the police, quite separately from you, that you received these notes and concealed them from Mr Whiteley.’

  ‘Because the Chief did not want to hear about them! And he had suffered so much from blackmailers in the past, I was trying to protect him from distress, can’t you see?
Oh God, what a stupid shambles!’

  ‘I know, I know – calm down, Morley. But your colleague is making a black story against you. One might almost imagine that Mr Beale wanted to accuse you of being an accomplice to murder.’

  ‘The swine. How does he know about the notes?’

  ‘He says you told him.’

  ‘Did I?’ Leonard shook his head in confusion. ‘I could swear I did not.’

  ‘Mr Whiteley knew about two of the notes, at least. Could he have told Beale?’

  ‘I doubt it. But –’ Leonard was struck by a terrible thought. ‘Is it possible that Henry Beale knew about Horace Rayner, as he hinted to me – that he actually knew the man?’ How was Leonard going to face Beale in the store without knocking his ugly, sottish head off? ‘What is he up to, Arthur?’

  ‘Hoping to get your job, it looks like.’

  When Teddie ventured again to The Clinique to see Dr Taylor, he asked her at once, ‘How is your poor brother Leonard?’

  ‘Leonard? Oh, you mean that dreadful murder. Yes, it is shocking, isn’t it? We live in violent times, when no one has any respect for law and order. I shop at Whiteley’s, but I don’t know that I shall go there again. That poor old gentleman. What has he ever done to anybody?’

  ‘Except take their money off them.’ Dr Taylor, with his attentive brown eyes, had a way of saying droll things with a straight face. Teddie could not always tell whether he was joking or not. She had no sense of humour, she had been told.

  ‘Everyone at Chepstow Villas is in a state of complete turmoil.’ She was wearing her new sealskin hat, which Bella had helped her to choose, since her daughter Sophie was so hopeless in shops. ‘Leonard is to give evidence at the murder trial, you know. I went round there, in case Gwen needed me, but there was nothing I could do.’

  ‘How is Leonard?’ Dr Taylor asked again. ‘I wrote my sympathies, but didn’t like to intrude at a difficult time.’

  ‘He’s taking it very badly.’ Teddie had broadcast this lugubriously, but when she had said it to an acquaintance in Bradleys, in Bella’s hearing, her niece had surprised her by attacking her when they left the shop.

  ‘Uncle Leonard is brave. You might at least support him, Aunt Teddie.’

  ‘Don’t speak to me like that, young woman.’

  Bella stuck out her heavy jaw. ‘You’re gloating because No. 72 has had a bit of bad luck for a change.’

  ‘How dare you!’

  A hint of the truth hurts more than flagrant lies. Teddie was so upset that she had felt compelled to go to Egerton Terrace and talk to that nice Dr Taylor, who understood her. The visits were too expensive, but she had her own small legacy from her father, and Ralph was not interested in how she spent it.

  They passed the first ten minutes discussing what she should be called: Mrs Wynn or Mrs Ralph – which was what Tobias Taylor usually called her within the family. Teddie pondered. At home, when she could not come up with an answer, someone would cut in and take the conversation away from her. Here, in the comfortable Clinique consulting room, she could spend her money on sitting in silence, if she wanted.

  ‘Neither,’ she decided at last. ‘I come to see you by myself, and for myself, Dr Taylor. It’s nothing to do with my husband.’

  ‘That’s fair enough. You are yourself.’ Sometimes he said things which sounded simple, but were really quite deep when you thought about them.

  ‘Certainly not “Teddie”, even though you are a friend as well as – as my doctor.’ Teddie felt agitated with herself. ‘My doctor’ sounded too intimate, as though he had been mixed up in her confinements. ‘I don’t like “Teddie”.’ She was glad she had worn the dark glossy mushroom of a hat. She felt that it gave her some presence. ‘Vera called me that years ago when she couldn’t say “Edwina”, and it stuck. But I’ve always hated it. It’s like a man.’

  ‘Why don’t you ask the family to call you Edwina?’

  ‘Because they wouldn’t.’

  ‘It’s a beautiful name.’

  ‘You may think so.’ He need not think she would respond to flattery.

  ‘I can’t call you by that, however. It wouldn’t be professional.’

  They settled on ‘Mrs Edwina’. No one had ever called her that.

  This was all they did settle that afternoon. There were two men waiting to see Dr Taylor. (Two men! – what was he treating them for? Since Oscar Wilde, she saw something under every bush, without knowing what it was.) Mrs Edwina had only a short last-minute appointment, but she left feeling better.

  After William Whiteley’s grand funeral, with local flags at half mast and thousands of people in the streets to see the cortège pass by, Leonard was still heavy with loss, and with dread of the trial of Horace Rayner in March.

  The family reacted in their various ways. Gwen was loving and tender. Leonard was surprised to find that they came together in sex more often than when he was happy and secure, and Gwen reminded him that it had been the same after his father had died, and she had unexpectedly conceived their second son Dicky when she was forty.

  Dicky was jumpy. ‘They’re asking me about it at school.’

  ‘Play deaf and dumb,’ Flora said. She was sturdily sympathetic. ‘I seen a murder done once,’ she told Leonard. ‘Down the Scrubs.’

  ‘Did they make you give evidence?’

  ‘No fear. They slung the body on the railway line so that the trains would run over it. You mind what you say at the Bailey, sir. Keep mum about the threats.’

  ‘How do you know about them?’

  ‘Everybody knows. I can’t walk three steps down the Lane without they’re bothering me for secrets.’

  ‘What do you tell them?’

  ‘“Shove off.” The more you know, the less you tell. Remember that.’

  Aunt Teddie had come hovering round at first, tongue-tied and wringing her hands, but after that she was not much in evidence. She seemed somewhat distrait and self-absorbed.

  ‘Isn’t it odd,’ Madge remarked, ‘that people who don’t like themselves spend more time thinking about themselves than people who do? Sophie says she is even more woolgathering at home than usual. If it was anyone but Aunt Teddie, one might suspect her of conducting an intrigue.’

  ‘Madge!’ At least she had made her father laugh.

  Her aunt Vera got theatre tickets for The Scarlet Pimpernel, and also made Leonard come to dinner with some entertaining people. He did not like the play, and was dull in conversation at dinner, and too brusque with a guest who, insensitive to Vera’s toe under the table, wanted to hear ‘all about the Whiteley scandal’.

  Adelaide Morley came up trumps, like a good shopkeeper’s widow. ‘This is bad for trade and bad for you,’ she wrote to Leonard. ‘I wish I was not a sick old lady, and could come to back you up, my son.’

  Leonard should have gone to see her, but he had no time. Mr Whiteley’s two sons were still too occupied with lawyers and accountants to take on their father’s tasks. Henry Beale insinuated himself into some of the negotiations with W.W.’s personal contacts, and preened himself as if the obliteration of the Chief had promoted him above Leonard. He was obstructive and impossible, but Leonard was too busy to bother with him. Rather than being bad for trade, the tragedy had, ironically, increased business. There were more customers than ever. Whiteley’s, for so long a magnet of excellence, now also had a ghoulish attraction. People even came up to the office floor, hoping to see the place where the dastardly deed was done, and a glimpse of a bloodstain. The gossip was horrible. There was no proof that Horace Rayner was William Whiteley’s bastard son, but the public was delighted to think the worst. Leonard Morley, faithful Assistant Manager, so dedicated, like his leader, to what was fit and proper for Whiteley’s, felt personally sullied.

  Hugo was more worried about the Morley name being in the papers again during the trial, as it had after the inquest. ‘None of our family has ever been mixed up in anything like this.’ Could Leonard give evidence under a pseudonym? Ch
arlotte wondered. In 1903, when King Alexander of Serbia and Queen Draga had been assassinated, a prominent courtier had testified, wearing a hooded cloak.

  Bella, although very loyal to her uncle Leonard, was muddle-headed about the villain. She followed the popular humane ‘cause’, which likened the recovering assassin to a pig fattened for slaughter. When she parroted at dinner, ‘The death penalty is a crime worse than murder,’ her father told the guests at his table, ‘My daughter pretends to be so radical, but most of her ideas come from the yellow press.’

  Leonard Morley did not agree with the anti-capital punishment brigade. To him, hanging was too good for the man who had cut down the Chief.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The issue at the start of the murder trial of Horace Rayner was the state of his mind at the time of the killing. Doctors in support of the defence talked of his mental instability and diminished self-control. His recent years of alooholism, poverty and poor food had led, claimed his counsel, to impulsive insanity at a time of crisis.

  Could he be held responsible for his actions?

  The Times reported that the court had ruled him not medically or legally insane, but degenerate, through three generations of alooholism – his mother, his grandmother and great-grandmother.

  The young man looked shabby, but not degenerate. He was thin and ill and anxious, with a plaster on his face and a patch over his missing eye. From time to time, he put a shaking hand to his head, as though it hurt. It was two months since he had shot himself through the temple with the Colt revolver.

  ‘He looks so hang-dog,’ Gwen said tearfully to Leonard when they were back at home. ‘I don’t think I can bear to see him condemned.’

  ‘I want you with me in court,’ Leonard said. Soon, they would call him to give evidence. He needed her to be there. Gwen’s apparent, and very feminine, dependence on him obscured his deep dependence on her.

  ‘But if they are to judge him on intent, Leo, your story about the notes may be the final doom.’

  ‘Don’t use words like that, please. It’s bad enough already.’