Melanie shuddered slightly and looked up from the book. The appalling callousness of the murderer was conveyed with extraordinary vividness in that remark of his. For nearly twenty years he had exploited impressionable girls for profit, using a variety of names, marrying them, if necessary, as unconcernedly as he seduced them, and disappearing with their savings. In the early encounters, those who escaped being burdened with a child could consider themselves fortunate; his later brides were lucky if they escaped with their lives.
It was reassuring for a moment to set her eyes on her modern bathroom, its white carpet and ceramic tiles. Modern, luxurious and civilised. Smith and his pathetic brides inhabited a different world. What kind of bathroom had those poor creatures met their fates in? She had a vision of a cheap tin bath set on cold linoleum and filled from water jugs, illuminated by windows with coloured-glass panels. Not so different, she mused, from the shabby room William had converted — transformed rather — for her into this dream of a modern bathroom. Lying back in the water, she caught sight of the cornice William had repainted, highlighting the moulding with gold paint. So like him to preserve what he admired from the past and reconcile it with the strictly contemporary.
Friday night! She cupped some water in her hands and wetted her face. George Joseph Smith and his crimes had already receded enough for her to amuse herself with the thought that his system would probably work just as well today as it did in 1914. The postal service hadn’t improved much in all those years. If, like Daddy, you insisted on living without a telephone, you couldn’t get a letter in Bristol before Monday to say that your daughter had drowned in London on Friday evening.
How dreadfully morbid! More hot water with the right toe and back to the murders, quite remote now. When had Smith been tried and executed? 1915 — well, her own William had been alive then, if only a baby. Perhaps it wasn’t so long. Poor William, patiently waiting for her to come to bed. It wouldn’t be fair to delay much longer. How many pages to go?
She turned to the end to see, and her eye was drawn at once to a paragraph describing the medical evidence at Smith’s trial. The great pathologist, Sir Bernard Spilsbury, stated unequivocally that a person who fainted whilst taking a bath sitting in the ordinary position would fall against the sloping back of the bath. If water were then taken in through the mouth or nose it would have a marked stimulating effect and probably recover the person. There was no position, he contended, in which a person could easily become submerged in fainting. A person standing or kneeling might fall forward on the face and then might easily be drowned. Then, however, the body would be lying face downwards in the water. The jury already knew that all three women had been found lying on their backs, for Smith’s claim that Miss Lofty was lying on her side was nonsense in view of the size of the bath in Bismarck Road.
Bismarck Road. Melanie jerked up in the water and read the words again. Extraordinary. God, how horrible! It couldn’t possibly be. She snatched up the book and turned back the pages, careless of her wet hands. There it was again! Margaret made her will and bequeathed everything, nineteen pounds (but he had insured her life for £700) to her husband. Back at Bismarck Road, Highgate, a bath was installed that Friday night. Soon after 7.30 the landlady, who was ironing in her kitchen, heard splashes from upstairs and a sound which might have been wet hands being drawn down the side of the bath. Then there was a sigh. Shortly after, she was jolted by the sound of her own harmonium in the sitting-room. Mr John Lloyd, alias George Joseph Smith, was playing ‘Nearer, my God to Thee’.
Mr John Lloyd. Mr John Lloyd. That name. Was it possible? William said he knew nothing of his parents. He had grown up in the orphanage. A foundling, he said, with nothing but a scrap of paper bearing his name; abandoned, apparently, by his mother in the summer of 1915. The summer, she now realised, of the trial of George Joseph Smith, alias John Lloyd, the deceiver and murderer of women. It was too fantastic to contemplate. Too awful... An unhappy coincidence. She refused to believe it.
But William — what if he believed it? Rightly or wrongly believed himself the son of a murderer. Might that belief have affected his mind, become a fixation, a dreadful, morbid urge to relive George Joseph Smith’s crimes? It would explain all those coincidences: the honeymoon in Herne Bay; the insurance policy; the house in Bismarck Road; the new bath. Yet he had tried to keep her from having a bath, barred the way, as if unable to face the last stage of the ritual. And tonight she had tricked him and she was there, a bride in the bath. And it was Friday.
Melanie’s book fell in the water and she sank against the back of the bath and fainted. An hour later, her husband, having repeatedly called her name from outside the bathroom, broke through the sliding door and found her. That, at any rate, was the account William Lloyd gave of it at the inquest. She had fainted. Accidental death. A pity Sir Bernard Spilsbury could not have been in court to demonstrate that it was impossible. Even in a two-metre bath.
Arabella’s Answer
ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS
January, 1878
ARABELLA. If you are serious in aspiring to elicit a reply from a reputable journal such as ours, you should take the elementary trouble to express yourself in legible handwriting.
March, 1878
ARABELLA. Your Papa is perfectly right. A young girl of fifteen should not be seen at a dinner party at which unmarried gentlemen are guests. Your protestations at being, as you express it, ‘confined’ to your room do you no credit. A wiser girl would be content to occupy herself in some profitably quiet pastime, such as sewing, for the duration of the party. So long as you childishly persist in questioning decorum, you reveal your utter unreadiness for adult society.
October, 1879
ARABELLA. No gentleman sends flowers or any other presents to a young lady to whom he has not been introduced. Let him learn some manners and present his card to your parents if he entertains a notion of making your acquaintance. We doubt whether his conduct thus far will commend itself to your Papa.
December, 1879
ARABELLA. In common civility you are bound to receive the young gentleman if he has called on your Papa and satisfied him that his intentions are honourable. The ‘misgivings’ that you instance in your letter are of no consequence. A gentleman should be judged by his conduct, not his outward imperfections. The protruding teeth and shortness of stature are no fault of his, any more than your tallness is of your making. We expect to hear that you have set aside these absurd objections and obeyed your parents, who clearly have a more enlightened apprehension of this young gentleman than yourself.
February 1880
ARABELLA. We suspect that your anxieties are prompted by the shyness which is natural in a young girl, but which properly must grow into the self-possession of a lady. How can you possibly say that the gentleman’s blandishments are unwelcome when you have met him only once in your parents’ home?