A Christmas Resolution Read online

  “She will be a lot more, if she goes ahead with it,” Laker answered.

  “Then get on with finding out all you can about him,” Hooper ordered. “Somebody hates him enough to write him poisonous letters.”

  The first place Hooper called was the church in the neighborhood where Marlowe had lived before moving to Soames’s parish. That corresponded, as far as he could tell, with the time Rose Marlowe had died, roughly six years ago. He considered visiting the vicar, but what could the man tell him, even if he was willing? Only that Rose had drowned. Anything personal that he knew would be in confidence, and no clergyman of any denomination would break his vows of silence to tell a casual questioner, even from the police, anything that would be of help. Better to go straight to the police.

  It was a little after ten o’clock when he walked in the door of the local police station and across the dusty floor to the desk. He spoke to the sergeant on duty, introducing himself, giving his rank, and adding that he was working directly with Commander Monk of the Thames River Police. That might catch the man’s attention.

  “Morning, sir,” the sergeant responded. “How can I help you?”

  “It is concerning a death some six or seven years ago, a drowning, but not in the river. In the sea, off the south coast, I believe. But the woman who died lived in your area.”

  “In the sea, you say?” The sergeant looked puzzled.

  “Yes. Before I take a train all the way to the coast, I’d like to know something about her and her husband.” He saw the man’s face begin to reflect a certain anxiety. “What has reopened the issue is a matter of anonymous letters,” he added.

  The sergeant’s nose wrinkled, as if he smelled something sour.

  “Very nasty,” Hooper went on.

  “Coward’s way,” the sergeant agreed. “Usually find it’s a woman. Good with words, they are. How can we help?”

  Hooper did not have time to be subtle. Unless he was very lucky, this would be a long and fruitless trail. A lot of people could be hurt while he was going in the wrong direction, even when treading carefully. “The woman who died was named Rose Marlowe.” He saw the sergeant’s mouth turn down and a slight shake of his head. “Unpleasant things are being suggested about her death,” Hooper went on. “Innocent people could be hurt. But regardless of that, poisonous letters are a crime, when there’s a threat in them. And libelous, if the accusations aren’t true. And if they are, an even more terrible crime has been committed, possibly murder.”

  He was exaggerating to some extent. As far as he knew, there was no suggestion of that. But how much did he know? Only what Celia had told him of Marlowe’s rage and, she thought, also fear. And what about the next letter, and the one after that? He may be slipping ahead of events, but it would be too late to be sorry afterward.

  “Poor woman,” the sergeant said simply. “They said it was suicide. But I suppose you know that? Dreadfully unhappy she was, poor creature.”

  “How do you know that?” Hooper asked quickly. Perhaps this man could give him something new to follow up, new ideas, new feelings.

  “It isn’t only the River Police that’s good at their jobs,” the sergeant said, lifting his chin a little, his voice a note sharper. “See things as you can’t interfere with. Like to stop it, but you can’t. You can catch some fellows easy enough, but not the respectable ones, specially churchgoers, like. Hide behind a smart suit and a clean collar and get all the grammar right, and you can’t touch them.”

  “Don’t go round and round the bushes, man!” Hooper kept his patience with difficulty. “Do you mean her husband?”

  “ ’Course I do. Although he might have said different.”

  “You mean they had a violent sort of relationship? And no matter how much you might have disliked Marlowe, nothing except the truth is any good to me.”

  The sergeant started to answer, then changed his mind. He remained silent for a few moments, then spoke more carefully. “Mrs. Marlowe never said anything herself, and of course it didn’t happen where other people could see it.” He shook his head. “But other women see, you know? My wife told me when she met Mrs. Marlowe at the grocer’s, or the butcher’s, with her face all bruised, like, and covered up with face powder, or an arm it hurt her to use. Marge liked Mrs. Marlowe, and she said to me more than once that we should do something about it. But what can we do? The law doesn’t say a man can’t chastise his wife, if he thinks she needs it, God help her.”

  Hooper felt a chill run through him, as if the wind had changed. “You think it was him?”

  “I know it was,” the sergeant said in disgust. “Seen the fear in her eyes. She would’ve said if it were anyone else. And anyway, that girl of hers, Flora or something like that, she said right out it were her father what did that.”

  “Did you speak to her about it?” Hooper asked.

  The sergeant gave him a contemptuous look. “And say what? Only get the woman beaten again, and likely enough the daughter, too.”

  “What happened to the daughter when her mother died?”

  The sergeant’s face creased with sorrow. “Proper cut up, she was. Went a bit doolally. Then took to the streets to live, poor little thing! Pretty, she was. I expect she will do all right for five or ten years, till someone beats the hell out of her, or she gets some disease or other. I hope he rots in hell. And I won’t apologize for saying so.”

  Hooper tried to keep the emotion out of his own voice, but it was difficult. “Who would hate him enough to write letters to the people where he lives now?” He had never seen Flavia, if that was indeed her name, but Clementine’s bright face kept coming to his mind. How could she bear it if she had a child, and they were abused? Would the village help her? Or would they turn a blind eye and walk past, finding any excuse not to interfere? Of course, this charge could be wrong. The letters must be stopped. They could do terrible damage with the suspicions they aroused. Rose Marlowe might have been as mentally unstable as Marlowe himself said. Flavia could have taken her mother’s side for any number of reasons, from actual observation of violence to a vengeance against her father for what she had been told by her mother—truths, partial truths, or outright lies, to protect a lover, or anything else. Perhaps Flavia, like anyone else, did not wish to believe that her mother was deranged.

  Still, murder could not be ruled out. That was enough to frighten anyone.

  It made sense of Marlowe’s behavior, as Hooper had seen it. But it was only one view. It was word of mouth, hearsay, not evidence.

  “Can you give me the name of the vicar of the church he went to?” he asked the sergeant. When the sergeant wrote it down for him, he asked for other names as well: a doctor, Rose’s neighbors, local tradesmen she would have dealt with.

  “Are you going to do something, sir?” The sergeant’s voice lifted with hope.

  “I’m going to find as much as I can of the truth, and that has to include who wrote those letters. A lot of damage can be done to the innocent, as well as the guilty,” Hooper replied. It was an evasion and he knew it.

  “Innocent?” the sergeant asked. “I thought you said they were written to him.”

  “You know the man. Do you suppose he takes them quietly and burns them in the grate?” Hooper asked. “He has twice accused my wife of having written them, and forbidden her to remain friends with the young woman he is going to marry. If she doesn’t obey him, he has threatened to misinterpret an event in her recent past, which I am aware of—I was there—until all the people in the community know about it. But lies…” He stopped when he saw the expression on the man’s face. “I’ll do what I can,” he finished quietly. “Thank you.”

  The sergeant wrote half a dozen names and addresses on a sheet of paper and passed it across the desk to Hooper. “Look after your wife, sir. And if you can find the girl, maybe you could do something for her?”


  “I will.” It was a promise.

  * * *

  Hooper spoke first to the neighbors. Most of them said very little, but whether it was because they knew little or there was little to repeat, he was not sure. A picture emerged that fitted into what he already knew. Seth Marlowe was an easy man to dislike. He was outspoken, critical, self-righteous. But he was also rigorously honest, paying all his bills on time, and on occasion he was even generous. His manner was stiff, but always polite. He did not report gossip or repeat it, and he never lied.

  The churchgoers among them also said that Marlowe spoke of forgiveness, but only after confession was given and repentance was proved. Perhaps the thing that Hooper felt most deeply was that Marlowe apparently had no sense of humor. Life had been hard for him. Certainly, Hooper knew from Roberson that Rose had brought him a deep and understandable grief, shame, and ultimately, bereavement. That was a wound that would take years to heal, if it ever did.

  Reluctantly, Hooper could understand why the fear of losing Clementine—with her courage, her bright face, love of life, happy laughter—cut so deeply for Marlowe.

  As he spoke to people, Hooper found only suggestions, memories that were painful but conflicted. He saved them to mull over later, when he was home.

  He met up with Laker and Walcott at a little after four and they climbed into the boat. The men took him back to the stairs nearest his home, along the way telling him what little they had found. It added weight to what he already knew and confirmed Marlowe’s reputation for interfering. Apparently, Walcott had found out, he had been considered quite an authority about history, beginning with the Reformation. Laker had found a doctor who had treated Rose Marlowe. He was grieved and angry, but he would tell them no details, although he was not surprised to learn that she was dead.

  Hooper thanked them. “See you tomorrow. Good night.”

  “ ’Night, sir!” they replied above the slurping of the water on the stone steps leading up to the quayside.

  The first thing Hooper did, as soon as he came through the door, was to see that it was closed and locked behind him, barring the night where the heavy wind was carrying an edge of sleet. Celia came out of the sitting room the moment she heard the latch fall, her face creased with concern. He could see that it was for him, that she saw he was cold and tired and knew the distress he might be feeling.

  He hugged her first, before saying anything. Wordless comfort was what he needed, before even trying to tell her what he had found and what he had not. She seemed to understand, and perhaps that was what love ought to be. He ate a whole dish of stew before she asked him what he had learned.

  He hesitated. He thought of omitting some of the darker facts, but lying to her would hurt her more. And he wanted to share the weight of it, perhaps selfishly. “Apparently Marlowe hasn’t changed,” he began. “He…according to those who knew them, he actually beat her.” He watched the shock and then the disgust in her face.

  “It is more common than you might think,” she said very quietly. “Women don’t report it. Some are convinced it is their fault. They don’t want other people to know. And anyway, where would they go?”

  “Thank God he isn’t a real vicar! There’s none of the…mercy…the caring that Arthur Roberson has.” He hesitated only a moment. “And it seems it has been there a long time.”

  “Arthur won’t stand up against him,” she said reluctantly. “I don’t know why, but I presume it has something to do with some promise he might have made to Una. Maybe she protected Seth because he was her brother. Family loyalty. Or perhaps she really did know something we don’t.”

  He hesitated another moment, then said what he was thinking. “Or perhaps Roberson just avoided conflict.”

  Celia’s face was full of concern. She looked down for a moment.

  Hooper waited silently.

  She looked up again, her eyes reflecting her deep distress. “Or perhaps Marlowe is blackmailing him over something, as he tried to do to me. Perhaps there was something in Una’s death, an error, or an act of mercy misplaced, that forces Arthur to defend him.” She breathed in and out again, slowly. “Arthur has no one to turn to. He knows a lot of secrets of a lot of people. And he will be bound to protect anyone who has trusted him.”

  Hooper had not even thought of that. “Oh God!” he whispered. “What a burden to carry. He might know the truth, or a lot more of it, but be unable to tell us, even to hint at anything. Thank God I’m not a priest! What an unbearable load to carry!”

  “Perhaps you would have to trust God to sort it out somehow?” Celia said, her face creased with worry.

  “Does He do that?” Hooper asked, then wished he had not. It was a question that probed the depth of her faith.

  She gave a brief smile. “God won’t fix it,” she answered. “But He’ll show somebody else how to.”

  “You mean one of us?”

  She put out her hand and he grasped it.

  “Probably,” she agreed.

  * * *

  The next morning, Hooper went first to the River Police station at Wapping, on the north bank of the river. He learned that Walcott had found another previous address for Marlowe, but an investigation into it revealed nothing new that appeared to have meaning. Apparently, Seth Marlowe had always been a profound believer and a judgmental man. He had considered finding and naming fault to be a pastoral care, never realizing that, more often than not, it brought out the defensiveness in people, and it very seldom made anything better.

  On the other hand, he gave generously of both his time and his means. No one doubted that, and some were genuinely grateful. A few even pitied him for having such a joyless wife, and then a painfully wayward daughter.

  The letters were key, Hooper told Laker and Walcott. Two days investigating would make little difference to their day-to-day cases, and Monk had made it clear to them all the tragedies that would happen if any more letters were sent to Seth Marlowe.

  “Do you know exactly what the letters said, sir?” Laker asked. “Like exactly? Might give us the chance to…”

  “No,” Hooper replied. “Actually, he didn’t make a complaint; although, as I told you, he accused my wife of having written the first. And then he came to our home and accused her of writing the second. Then, she told me, he suddenly broke off and started accusing the vicar of writing the letters. But he didn’t apologize to her for his appalling behavior.”

  “Don’t suppose he sees apologizing as necessary,” Walcott said drily. “But you reckon he thinks the vicar really wrote the letters?”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of, and that he’s going to settle it himself,” Hooper admitted. “I don’t think he’s right, though.”

  “But whoever did write them, they’ve got it coming to them,” Laker retorted. “Filthy thing. Coward’s way…”

  “For the moment, it’s the only way,” Hooper pointed out. “If you have no power, no money, no position, and nobody would believe you against a pillar of righteousness like Seth Marlowe…”

  “You mean a woman, or a servant, someone dependent?” Laker asked.

  “Well, it shouldn’t be like that,” Hooper said. “But…”

  “You trying to upend the whole of society, and start again?” Laker asked with a crooked smile. “Wherever you start, before you get halfway, they’ve gone right back again to masters and servants, bullies and victims, those who have and those who have not. Begging your pardon, sir, but you know nothing at all!”

  “I’m not trying to change society. I’m trying to find out who wrote anonymous letters to Seth Marlowe before he gets to them—or to who he thinks it is. Before there’s a real physical crime and someone is badly hurt,” Hooper replied tartly.

  The smile vanished from Laker’s face.

  “Yes, sir,” Laker said. “Should I be looking at women in particular? Like a frien
d of his wife who died? Or at any man who cared about her? Did she have family?”

  “No, and I thought of that,” Hooper replied. “She had no particular friends. Perhaps if she had, they might have helped her when she was alive.” He heard the anger in his own voice and realized he cared very much about what had happened to Rose Marlowe. Was he believing the worst about Seth Marlowe because he did not like the man? He barely knew him. That was simple. He had verbally attacked Celia, and Hooper believed that he was already bullying Clementine, which could only get worse. Was he being careful and perceptive, preventing a wrong before it happened? Or being unjust to a man he did not like? Overprotective of a woman he loved more and more deeply as time passed? And protective of Clementine because Celia cared for her?

  “We have to find who wrote those letters and what was in them,” he stated.

  “Well, you said there were no postmarks, sir,” Walcott began. “So they were delivered by hand. Someone who knows where he lives and can get there easily, without being noticed.”

  “Yes, it has to be somebody who knows a good deal about him that isn’t general knowledge,” Hooper agreed. “I couldn’t trace any friends like that. But then, I suppose no one would be likely to admit it, especially if they had written the letters.”

  “You didn’t see the letters yourself at all, sir? I mean…even the handwriting?” Laker asked.

  “No,” Hooper admitted. “But I believe they’re real. Marlowe was almost hysterical with rage. And I presume they caused fear, which means there was something in them that he was afraid of. We can’t ask his wife, poor woman. There’s no use asking a church vicar who might know or might not know, but either way can’t tell us.”

  “What about this daughter, sir?” Laker asked. “If we find her, she might know a lot.”

  “If she’s taken to the streets, poor little thing, good luck finding her,” Walcott said bitterly. “She’ll be invisible by now. And she won’t be calling herself Marlowe!” His face was creased with sudden, fierce anger, as if he was imagining her as a child of his own.