“That was an unfortunate situation with one of our members, as I heard it described. I was away at the time to oversee a new variety of turf for the courts. The daughter was a member of the women’s club.”
“What sort of situation?” Brodie asked.
“It had to do with some damage here at the park to two of the courts, and an altercation with one of the young men in that photograph.
“The young woman’s brother had something to do with it. Rather than bring in the authorities, the directors chose to simply ask the father to withdraw his membership for some reason, and nothing more was said in the matter.”
“Who was the member who was asked to withdraw from the club?”
Mr. Hughson gestured to that photograph.
“The photographer, quite well known for portraits of the royal family, I’m told. By the name of Laughton, as I recall.”
Paul Laughton was the photographer who had taken that photograph as well as others at Wimbledon. Then, he had withdrawn his membership after an incident that involved his son.
“He was there,” I commented as we returned to the rail station to await the next train back to London.
“Who was there?” Brodie asked.
“The photographer, Paul Laughton, was at my aunt’s party. I saw him only briefly. His daughter was there as well.”
Both the son and daughter had also been members, according to what Mr. Hughson told us.
What would have prompted damage to the courts? And then being asked to withdraw their membership from the club?
We arrived back in central London, then continued on to the office on the Strand.
It had been a long, difficult day. However, far more difficult for the Strachans and our other clients. Murder was a nasty business.
I returned with Brodie. I thought of the Whitechapel murders that still had not been solved.
I had wondered if there might be a connection, however Brodie, far more experienced in these things, thought not. The method of the murders simply was not the same.
Whereas the Whitechapel murderer had been most brutal, even methodical in his attacks, the victims had all been poor, working-class women, as if the murderer was making a statement, leaving his own calling card as it were.
There had even been suggestions that the murderer might be a physician by the precision of the wounds that were made. All to no end as the murders had abruptly stopped.
The deaths ofouryoung women, as I thought of them, had been far different. Methodical to be certain, even appearing to be planned, the women in the photograph specifically chosen.
And the fifth young woman who had not appeared in that photograph? Her father relinquishing his membership after an incident that the other directors chose not to pursue?
Was it possible that Paul Laughton had decided to take some sort of revenge for the incident? I hardly thought it was cause for murder.
“There’s more to this,” Brodie commented. “There’s something that we haven’t discovered yet.”
It was well into the evening by the time our driver turned onto the Strand with the usual overhead electric sign lit up along the way that advertised the latest plays at the theaters, including my friend Templeton’s latest play at the Drury.
Quite recent, the addition of electric signs in the window of a tavern tucked back from the Strand that informed they were open, as well as a sign in a window with an electric light at the Public House across from the office that lit up the street.
However, it was the brightly lit windows at the second-floor landing that now caught my attention.
“Did you leave the electric on?” I asked Brodie.
He had not. He was after all, a Scot, known for their frugal ways.
How then was the light now on? And other lights along the street, including those carried by the police?
I was out of the cab before it stopped, Brodie just after.
