Mrs. Jeffries and the Feast of St. Stephen (A Victorian Mystery) (21 page)

Hatchet laughed. “How many people are left in the tontine?”

“There were three, but now that Whitfield is dead, there’s only two left: Mr. Farringdon and Henry Becker.”

Hugh Langdon lived in a six-story brown brick town house in Bulstrode Street in Marylebone. Witherspoon and Barnes stood inside the entrance while the housekeeper went to fetch Langdon.

As was his habit, Barnes studied the reception hall. Experience had taught him that a man’s home could often give you a hint or two about his character. The walls were painted a pale cream; the floor was made of simple, polished oak; and directly opposite him was a wide staircase. A brass umbrella stand and coat tree were the only furniture in the foyer.

Hugh Langdon stepped through a set of double doors farther down the long hallway and motioned them forward. “Good day, Inspector. I’ve been expecting you. Do come inside, please.”

They went into the drawing room. Barnes noted that the walls were painted the same shade as the foyer. A lovely peacock blue and brown carpet covered the wood floor, and blue and cream striped curtains hung at the three tall windows facing the street. Like those in the foyer, the furnishings were simple, attractive, and well crafted. The fittings and the furniture here hadn’t been done to impress anyone, but rather to provide comfort for the occupants.

Langdon waved them to a pair of overstuffed chairs. “Please sit down, gentlemen.”

“Thank you, Mr. Langdon,” Witherspoon responded. “We’ll try not to take up too much of your time. We do understand that you’ve a business to run.”

“Would you or the constable care for a cup of tea?” Langdon asked. He sat down on the love seat opposite them.

“No, thank you,” Witherspoon replied.

“Then I expect you’d like to get on with your questions.” Langdon smiled sardonically. “I’m sure you’re busy as well.”

“I understand you were only recently introduced to Mr. Whitfield. You met him shortly before you went to dinner at his home,” Witherspoon began.

“Actually, that’s not quite true,” Langdon interrupted smoothly. “I’d met Stephen Whitfield years earlier.”

Witherspoon was taken aback. According to their information, the two men had met for the first time only days before the murder. That was one of the reasons they’d left Langdon to be questioned last. Witherspoon had assumed that because Langdon and Whitfield hadn’t known each other or had any obvious connections besides their relationships with Eliza Graham, Langdon would be the least likely of all the dinner guests to have wanted Whitfield dead. “I’m afraid I don’t understand. Mrs. Graham specifically told us she’d introduced the two of you only a few days before the murder.”

“And she was telling the truth. Eliza had no idea that I’d met Whitfield previously, and it seems he’d forgotten our meeting as well,” Langdon replied. “I apologize, Inspector. I ought to have mentioned this before, but the truth of the matter is that I met Stephen Whitfield thirty years ago.”

“How did you meet?” Barnes reached in his pocket and pulled out his notebook

“We ran into Stephen last week when we were on our way into the Adelphi Theatre.”

“No, I meant, how did you meet thirty years ago?” the constable clarified.

“Oh, sorry,” Langdon said. “I wanted to become a member of the Bonfire Club. I was very young and trying my best to make my way in this hard old world, and I thought being a member of that particular organization would help me in business.”

“And you met Whitfield at the club?” Witherspoon asked.

“Not quite. Whitfield was the chairman of the membership committee. I went to him and asked for a recommendation.” Langdon grinned broadly. “Apparently that was the worst possible course of action. Whitfield took great offense that I’d dare approach him—and not only that, he blackballed me from membership in the club.”

“That must have made going to his house for dinner a bit awkward,” Witherspoon commented.

“Not really. As I said, he hadn’t remembered me when we met that night at the theater.” Langdon shrugged. “There was no reason why he should—the incident obviously hadn’t been particularly important to him.”

“Did you join another gentlemen’s club?” The inspector watched Langdon’s face as he asked the question. He was trying to determine how important membership to this club might have been for Langdon. Being blackballed from a society he was keen to join could be a motive for murder. In Witherspoon’s experience, people were capable of holding grudges for a very long time. Old sins cast long shadows.

“No. I knew that if I couldn’t get into the Bonfire, none of the other clubs would have me. Word gets about when you’ve been blackballed. But it was a long time ago, Inspector,” Langdon said. “As the saying goes, it’s all water under the bridge now.”

“On the night you went to dinner at his home, did you inform Mr. Whitfield that you’d met before?” Barnes asked. “Or that he’d blackballed you?”

“Indeed I did.” Langdon leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. “I hadn’t planned on mentioning the matter, as I didn’t wish to cause Mrs. Graham any embarrassment. After all, I was her escort. Whitfield took us into the morning room to see the Christmas tree he’d had put up, and afterwards, when I’d gone back to the drawing room, he followed me. He said he wanted to have a word with me. But as I found his conversation somewhat objectionable, I’m afraid my good intentions about being polite went right out the window, and I took the opportunity to remind him that we’d met many years earlier.” Langdon paused. “He didn’t seem pleased by the news.”

“Why did you go back to the drawing room?” Barnes asked quickly.

“I wanted to get some fresh air. The smell in the morning room was overpowering. The candles on that tree were blazing away, there was incense burning, and the ladies had doused themselves quite liberally with perfume. When my eyes began to water, I knew it was time to make a graceful exit into another part of the house.”

“What did you mean when you said that Whitfield didn’t seem pleased to know you’d met previously? Did he tell you that specifically?” Witherspoon asked.

“He didn’t say a word, Inspector. He just stood there, staring at me. But I could tell the news bothered him.”

Barnes looked up from his notebook. “How could you tell, sir?”

“It was dead easy,” Langdon replied. “You’re a policeman, and I’ll bet you know what I’m talking about. I’m sure you do it all the time when you’re questioning suspects or taking a statement. You’re doing it now as we speak. You appear to be making notes, but I can see that you and the inspector are observing me very closely. You see how my expression changes whenever you ask a question, or you watch the way I hold myself when I give you my answers. Very few people are skilled at truly hiding their feelings, and Whitfield was no exception. His face was as easy to read as the front page of the
Times
.”

“I imagine it was,” Barnes agreed.

“What did you find so objectionable about Whitfield’s conversation when he followed you into the drawing room?” Witherspoon asked.

“Everything.” Langdon uncrossed his arms and leaned forward. His expression hardened. “He tried to speak to me about Mrs. Graham. But I cut him off. My personal relationships are no one’s business but mine.”

“Do you know why he’d wish to discuss such a matter with someone he considered a stranger?” Witherspoon asked. Past experience had shown him that matters of the heart were always sensitive subjects.

“He wanted to warn me off her, Inspector. But I wasn’t prepared to discuss her with Stephen Whitfield under any circumstances. I may not have been born to an upper-class family, but I am a gentleman when it comes to the women in my life. I certainly wasn’t going to stand there and let him denigrate her character because she’d chosen me over him.”

“So you knew that Mrs. Graham and Mr. Whitfield had been seeing each other?” Barnes asked.

“Mrs. Graham told me about her relationship with him from the very beginning,” he replied. “Furthermore, she also told me he’d presumed that simply because they’d seen one another socially, she was willing to marry him. She wasn’t.”

“But he had proposed to her,” Witherspoon stated.

“True.” Langdon smiled sadly. “But Eliza had been candid with him. She’d told him she needed time to think about the matter. Yet even though she’d been honest and hadn’t made any promises, she was sure he assumed she was going to consent to marry him.”

Barnes said, “How long had you been seeing Mrs. Graham?”

“We met this past summer at a charity ball. We’ve been seeing one another ever since.”

“And you didn’t mind that she was still seeing Stephen Whitfield?” Witherspoon stared at him doubtfully. Men who’d made as much money as Hugh Langdon hadn’t done so by sharing what they possessed. “You didn’t object to that, sir?”

Langdon flushed angrily. “Of course I didn’t like it, Inspector. But Mrs. Graham had her reasons for continuing to see him, and frankly, at the time she told me about him, I’d no idea how our relationship might progress. She needs to marry, and as I wasn’t willing to commit to such a course of action until very recently, I could hardly object to her continuing a relationship with Whitfield. He had made it perfectly clear that he did want to marry her.”

“And apparently you decided you did as well,” Barnes murmured. He suddenly felt sorry for Stephen Whitfield. He might have been an arrogant, upper-class twit, but he’d been playing second fiddle for months and hadn’t even known it.

“Yes, I did,” Langdon declared. “Mrs. Graham and I are very well suited to one another. I proposed to her. That’s the reason I wanted to accompany her to the dinner party that night. I wanted her to break it off with Stephen, and I wanted to be there when she did it.”

“Yet you refused to discuss her with him when he brought the subject up,” Witherspoon reminded him.

“That’s right, Inspector.” Langdon said. “I did. I wanted Eliza to do the telling. I only wanted to be there in case he got angry or abusive.”

“Was there any reason to think he might react badly?” Witherspoon asked.

Langdon’s eyes narrowed. “Of course there was. He had quite a bad temper.”

“Did Mrs. Graham tell you that?” Barnes looked up from his notebook.

“She did not. I knew about Whitfield’s temper from my own experiences with the man.”

“But you hadn’t seen him in years,” the constable argued.

“So what, Constable? A leopard doesn’t change his spots just because he’s grown a few gray hairs around his snout,” Langdon snapped. “Thirty years ago, when I asked him for help in getting into that stupid club, he became so enraged by my temerity, by my even daring to approach him with such a request, that he tried to strike me.”

Witherspoon’s eyebrows rose. “That is hardly the act of a gentleman.”

Langdon sank back against the love seat. “It didn’t really matter, Inspector. He was middle-aged, and I was young and fit. I easily avoided his fists and even got in a blow or two of my own.”

That’s the real reason he blackballed you, Barnes thought. You didn’t let him cuff you about and pretend that his kind still rule the world.

“But you can understand why I wanted to be here when she told him it was over between them. I didn’t want him taking his anger out on Eliza,” Langdon continued. “But as it turned out, I needn’t have worried. Before she could speak to him alone, he died.”

 
Smythe whistled as he stepped through the door of the Dirty Duck Pub. Since he and Betsy had their little chat yesterday, life seemed just that bit brighter. They weren’t back to normal yet, but they were getting there. He’d not lost her. She still loved him.

He pushed his way through the crowd to Blimpey’s table. “Good day, old friend,” Smythe said as he slipped onto the stool.

Blimpey grunted a greeting and then waved at the barmaid, caught her attention, and pointed to Smythe.

“What’s wrong, Blimpey?” Smythe asked. “You look right miserable.”

“I am miserable. Business is terrible.” Blimpey snorted. “Half of London is gone to Scotland or Wales or some such other heathen place for Christmas. My sources at three of the busiest police stations are all down with the flu, and my man at the Old Bailey just told me he wants a raise. Can you believe it? Every time you turn around, someone’s got their hand in your pocket or they’re malingering in bed instead of doing their work properly.” He broke off as the barmaid slipped a pint of beer on the table. She gave Smythe a quick grin and then scurried back to the bar.

“People can’t ’elp it if they take ill.” Smythe picked up his pint. “And you don’t ’ave to give your Old Bailey source a raise. You can always say no.”

“He’s too good a source to risk.” Blimpey frowned. “I’ve got to give him a raise. Blast it all. No tellin’ what he’ll be wantin’ next year.”

“And there is a nasty flu goin’ around.” Smythe took a quick sip of beer. “So you can’t blame your other sources for takin’ to their beds.”

“Hah! Young people these days will find any reason not to do their jobs,” Blimpey cried. “Not like when I was growing up. You didn’t take to your bed at the first sign of a sniffle or a bit of a cough.”

Smythe put down his glass and stared at his companion. Blimpey kept his head lowered, staring at the tabletop as if it were a treasure map. “What’s really wrong? This isn’t like you. You’ve never complained about your sources taking a bit of time to themselves. As a matter of fact, everyone knows you always treat your people decently. That’s one of the reasons people work for you—you’re good to ’em.”

Blimpey said nothing for a moment; then he lifted his chin and looked Smythe in the eye. “Oh, blast it. I’m bein’ silly, and I know it. Makin’ excuses because I don’t want you to think ill of me.”

Smythe didn’t like the sound of that, but he said nothing.

“The truth of the matter is, I’m a bit embarrassed. I’ve not got much information for you at all, and from the way my sources are droppin’ off, I have grave doubts that I’m going to find out anything useful in the near future.”