the smallest attention to Thackeray’s side of the street, but he went through the motions of making sure there were other pedestrians between himself and his quarry and occasionally altering his stride to take advantage of the cover of a passing vehicle.
Across Red Lion Street she stopped to exchange words with an older woman in a grey coat who had obviously been shopping, for an elderly manservant weighed down with parcels had stopped at the same time and stood patiently some yards behind her. It occurred to Thackeray that Alice must be well known in Richmond, at least among the well-to-do. Whatever felonies she intended with her brush and comb she was going to find it difficult to avoid being recognised. He stopped beside a tobacconist’s and waited, like the man with the parcels, for the end of the conversation.
Several minutes later, she took her leave of the woman in grey and moved on towards the point where Hill Street curved to the right and became George Street. To the left was Richmond Green, to the right the Parish Church, and ahead, beyond the Quadrant, the railway station. She chose none of these directions. Instead, she opened the door of a shop on the right and went inside. Thackeray stepped briskly ahead and drew level with the shop. It was a milliner’s. He thought of the brush and comb and smiled broadly. Cribb has not included a hat-shop in his calculations.
The window of the shop was arranged on the principle that the more goods one displayed, the greater was the chance of engaging the attention of a customer. From Thackeray’s side of the street the hats in their rows looked not too different from the arrangement of apples in the greengrocer’s next door.
He prepared to wait again. Five minutes passed by the clock over the jeweller’s midway along George Street. He was rather charmed by this little interlude in Alice Probert’s charitable excursion. Much as he admired young women with social consciences, he liked to be assured that they occasionally slipped into a milliner’s and tried on hats.
After another five minutes cold feet were beginning to occupy him more than saintly women. Nobody had gone into the shop since Alice, and only one customer, dressed in brown, had emerged. The stream of traffic and pedestrians coursed past him, emphasising how inactive he was. Then the disquieting thought came to him that there might be another entrance at the back of the shop, with access from Red Lion Street. He crossed the street in the direction of the greengrocer’s and turned and walked past the milliner’s, with the merest glance through the window. To his mortification there was nobody inside but a shop-assistant arranging a bonnet on a stand.
He turned about and pushed open the door. The assistant was a girl of thirteen or so. Her eyes opened wide at the arrival of an unaccompanied man in the shop. ‘May I help you, sir?’ she said, more as an expression of surprise than a promise of assistance.
‘I hope so. I was looking for my-er-niece. I thought she came in here to try on a hat a few minutes ago.’
‘You must be mistaken, sir. We haven’t had a customer in here for half an hour.’
Half an hour? It had not been that long. ‘I’m sure she came in,’ Thackeray insisted. ‘There ain’t a back door to the shop, is there?’
‘No, sir. Perhaps if you could tell me how madam was dressed. .’
‘Dark green coat,’ said Thackeray. He was good at descriptions. ‘Hat the same colour, trimmed with white.
And she was carrying a basket of oranges.’
‘Oh!’ said the girl, as if the clouds had rolled away. ‘Wait a moment.’ She crossed to a chest of drawers and took out a large purple hat. ‘Was madam’s hat in this style, but green in colour?’
‘That’s the one!’ said Thackeray.
‘She got it here last week,’ said the girl. ‘It matched her coat beautifully. But she came in fifteen minutes ago to visit Miss Barkway, the manageress. She comes almost every day. She is not a customer, sir. She is a personal friend of Miss Barkway. You
‘I’m her Uncle Edward,’ said Thackeray at once. ‘Where is she now? Through there?’ He pointed to a door he had noticed behind a full-length mirror.
‘That leads upstairs to Miss Barkway’s rooms,’ said the girl in a whisper. ‘The lady always goes straight upstairs and comes down after five minutes in different clothes. I really don’t know why. Perhaps you do. She left the shop a few minutes before you came in. Didn’t you notice her? But of course you wouldn’t if you expected to see her in the green hat. She was wearing brown. And she always covers her face with a veil.’
‘Oh glory!’ said Thackeray, remembering the figure he had seen come out of the shop. ‘Did you by any chance notice which way she went?’
‘I can’t say I was watching her today, but I’ve sometimes seen her cross the street and go through Golden Court towards Richmond Green. It’s a little paved passage-’
‘I’m obliged to you, miss,’ he said, already opening the door. He put his hand in his pocket and found sixpence. ‘I can trust you not to say anything about this to Miss Barkway, can’t I?’
Golden Court was lined with small, interesting shops where people lingered and reflected, indifferent to the activity of George Street. Thackeray’s arrival on the scene, running, was met with looks of the sort traction-engines receive when they pass through small villages. Concerned only with the possibility that Alice had given him the slip, he clattered heavy-footed through the passage. Richmond Green opened to him at the end, some ten acres of turf bordered by a narrow road, with elegant houses beyond. A hundred yards ahead was the figure of a woman in brown carrying a basket. As he watched, she turned left and entered one of the buildings fronting the Green.
For an instant before he started after her, Thackeray sensed that someone else was coming after him through Golden Court. It was no more than a fleeting impression and at this moment it mattered to him less than the necessity of fixing in his mind which house Alice Probert had entered. He did not look behind him. Instead he crossed the Green to the three-storeyed terrace Alice had entered. It was an example of the period when terraces were built as gentlemen’s residences rather than workmen’s cottages. Indeed, as he approached the tall gate of the end house she had gone into, and looked through the wrought-iron work at the Roman pilasters and frieze that framed the front door, and at the five bays on each of the upper floors, he felt bound to ask himself what the poor of Richmond were doing behind such an exterior. And why Alice Probert chose to clothe herself in brown and wear a veil before she visited there.
He reckoned a minute had passed since she had gone inside, but there was no movement behind the ground floor windows. He waited another two minutes, as if admiring the lines of the building, as people must often have done, and then moved on. It seemed likely that Alice was being received in a room at the rear of the house, and he wanted to confirm the fact. There was no tradesmen’s entrance at the side, so he continued a few yards along the pavement until he came to a red-brick arch, which a board informed him had been the gateway to the long- demolished Richmond Palace. He went through into Old Palace Yard, turning left at a building named The Trumpeter’s House. A short way ahead he recognised the rear of the terrace, surrounded by a tall brick wall. He located an unlocked gate and entered the garden. There was a small shed to his left, close to the house, a woodstore, he decided, and a suitable place to shelter inside briefly. It did house wood, but in the form of picture- frames, several stacked against the wall and another half-constructed, supported on a carpenter’s bench. An oil- painting lay nearby, presumably after being measured for its frame. It was a still life of two vegetable marrows.
He sat on the edge of the bench and considered what to do next. He had no authority to enter the house. He discounted the idea of speaking to the servants. It was safer to work alone, from outside. He would begin by making discreet observations through the windows.
He crept from the hut with a stealth that would not have disgraced a Red Indian and flitted from window to window at the rear of the house. Discouragingly, this bold manoeuvre yielded no return. The first windows he reached were so coated with condensation that the room behind could only be the kitchen, and the rest were shuttered. If he wanted to persist with the investigation he would need to raise himself by some means to the level of the first floor. He looked round for a ladder. None was available. But it is difficult to keep a Scotland Yard man down when he is determined to go up. Adjoining the back of the house was a concrete path and between the path and a small lawn was a wooden trellis supporting a Virginia creeper.
He stepped back and estimated the height of the first floor window nearest the trellis. It was some fourteen feet above the ground. He examined the trellis. It was formed in six-inch squares. He counted twenty squares from the ground to the top. As a structure it was sturdy enough to support a Virginia creeper, but would it take a climber of fifteen stone?
He walked round to the side facing the lawn and gripped two of the upright laths and set his right boot on the
