Mrs. Jeffries and the Feast of St. Stephen (A Victorian Mystery) (6 page)

“He’s worked on one of my cases,” Witherspoon said. “But I can’t recall which one it was.”

He’d actually worked on virtually all of the inspector’s cases, but only one of them in an official capacity. “If this isn’t his district, is he the one doing the postmortem?” She held her breath.

“Indeed he is. He’s doing it tonight.” Witherspoon took another sip of tea.

“And he was the one that thought there might be foul play involved?”

“He’s fairly sure the fellow was poisoned.”

Mrs. Jeffries raised her eyebrows. “He was able to make a diagnosis so quickly?”

“It was something the victim said before he died that led the doctor to think so.” He told her the circumstances leading to Bosworth’s suspicions. “So you see, even if it turns out the man was poisoned, we’ve still no evidence it was murder. It could be accidental.”

“Even if it was foxglove that killed him?” she queried gently. She didn’t want the inspector clinging to false hope. She trusted Bosworth’s instincts. The good doctor had seen too many corpses not to have developed a heightened ability to know when something was wrong. This was a murder, not an accident.

Witherspoon sighed deeply. “I know I’m probably deluding myself, but it is Christmas, and you know what happens at this time of year, especially if the victim is a member of the upper class.”

“And I take it that the deceased is one of them?” She smiled sympathetically. She knew exactly what was bothering her inspector.

“Oh, yes—at least, he appears to be a wealthy man. The house is huge, and he has no occupation. According to his sister-in-law, he’s an English gentleman, and you know what that means.”

“They’ll put pressure on you to solve this case as soon as possible. They’ll want an arrest by Christmas,” she murmured.

He nodded in agreement. “There’s no real reason why this season should be any different from any other time of the year, but somehow it always is. Perhaps we’ll get lucky, and by tomorrow morning we’ll find out that the doctor was mistaken and poor Mr. Whitfield died of a perfectly natural heart attack or stroke.”

“Perhaps you will, sir,” she said politely, though she didn’t for a moment believe it to be true.

Witherspoon helped himself to the last sandwich. “Gracious, I was hungry. I do hope poor Constable Barnes had something at home he could eat. It appears there are quite a number of people who didn’t finish their meals tonight.” He told her about the interrupted dinner party at the Whitfield house.

She questioned him cautiously. By the time she poured the last of the tea, she’d found out the names of the other guests and the information they’d given in their statements. “So it was Mr. and Mrs. Farringdon who’d brought the Bordeaux Whitfield drank?”

“That’s correct.” Witherspoon covered his mouth as he yawned. “And the Bordeaux was the only thing that he alone consumed. So I had that taken into evidence along with everything else that had been served. I do hope that, if it is poison that killed Whitfield, it was in the Bordeaux. Otherwise, by tomorrow morning, we may have another half-dozen corpses.”

 
Downstairs, Smythe and Wiggins were doing some reporting of their own.

“There were half a dozen people that come out of the ’ouse,” Wiggins said around a mouthful of food. “But I daren’t follow any of ’em, ’cause that ruddy front door kept opening and I’d no idea ’ow many more of them was coming down those steps. So I just stayed hid until I saw the inspector and Constable Barnes leave. Then I went and met up with Smythe.”

“At the pub?” Betsy asked archly. “How very convenient.”

“It’s not like there’s much else open at that time of night,” Smythe replied harshly. “And I was only there for a few minutes before they called last orders.”

“So you found out nothing?” she asked.

Mrs. Goodge sighed inwardly and hoped this wasn’t a sign of things to come. “Smythe, why don’t you tell us in your own words what’s what?” she asked.

“Thank you, Mrs. Goodge. As it happens, I did find out a bit. The man who died was Stephen Whitfield. The news had already made it to the pub, but no one had any details. I did find out that Whitfield was a widower in his late sixties, rich as sin and courtin’ a woman a good twenty years younger.”

“I wonder if she was one of the people who come out of the house. They must ’ave been ’aving a dinner party, because they were all in evenin’ clothes.” Wiggins frowned thoughtfully. “None of them women come out alone, and there was only one of ’em that looked to be youngish. But she was with another bloke.”

“I’m sure we’ll get the names of the guests from the inspector,” the cook said. She’d noticed that Betsy had gone completely silent. That wasn’t good, either. “Mrs. Jeffries is upstairs with him now.”

Just then they heard her footsteps coming down the back stairs, and a moment later she hurried into the kitchen, carrying a tray of dirty dishes. “Good, you’re all still up.”

“We want to find out what happened,” Betsy said. “Was it a murder?”

“Dr. Bosworth certainly seems to think so.” Mrs. Jeffries put the tray down on the counter.

“Our Dr. Bosworth?” Mrs. Goodge asked. “Did it happen in his district?”

Everyone in the household knew that Bosworth had been appointed a police surgeon. It had helped their investigations enormously.

“It wasn’t in his district—it was in the inspector’s. But Dr. Bosworth had taken rooms just across the street from the victim’s house. He was sent for when the man collapsed.” She took her usual spot at the head of the table and told them what she’d learned from the inspector.

Tired as they all were, they listened carefully, occasionally asking a question or making a comment. When the housekeeper finished, she leaned back in her chair. “We’ve the names of the other guests at the dinner party, and we know the man died under suspicious circumstances, but before we go on the hunt, perhaps we’d better wait until we hear whether Dr. Bosworth finds any poison in the man’s stomach.”

“But we might not find that out until late tomorrow,” Betsy protested. “I think we ought to take Dr. Bosworth at his word and start right away.”

“What if it’s not murder?” Wiggins asked reasonably. “We’d ’ave wasted a lot of time and energy findin’ out about people who’ve done no wrong. That doesn’t seem right.”

“And just because these people were at the dinner party, that doesn’t mean anything, especially if he was poisoned,” Mrs. Goodge pointed out. “A poisoner doesn’t have to see his victim die. It’s not like doin’ the deed with a knife or gun. If Stephen Whitfield was poisoned, the killer might have put it in something he ate or drank days before he actually died. Poisons don’t always act right away.”

“That’s true,” Betsy agreed. But she wanted to be out of the house. She wanted to be walking the streets and chatting with merchants and grocery clerks so that she wouldn’t have to deal with her current problem. “But I don’t think it would hurt anything to find out a few bits and pieces about the people who were there last night. Maybe the killer wanted to watch him die and was sitting right there at the dinner table.”

“You think one of the Farringdons murdered him?” Mrs. Jeffries asked curiously. It wasn’t like Betsy to leap to any sort of conclusions at this stage of the investigation.

“I’ve no idea. But Whitfield was the only one drinking the Bordeaux wine, and he’s the only one who is dead.”

“So far,” Mrs. Jeffries murmured. “As Mrs. Goodge has pointed out, some poisons don’t act right away. The poison might have been in something else, and he simply got a larger, stronger dose than the others.”

“I don’t think so,” Wiggins said. “No one else that come out of the house looked the least bit ill. Betsy’s on to something ’ere. The wine was opened as soon as the Farringdons arrived, but Whitfield were the only one drinkin’ it. Then it set open for a good while as the guests milled about the place.”

“Which means that anyone might have dropped something into it, especially if it looked like Whitfield was the only one drinking it,” Smythe said. “Which would mean the killer was definitely wantin’ him dead.”

“That’s right.” Betsy grinned triumphantly, then caught herself and composed her features. She didn’t want him getting any special smiles. Not yet, at any rate. “So I think we ought to get right on the case. As Mrs. Jeffries said, our inspector is going to have all sorts of pressure on him to get this murder solved before Christmas.”

“What about Luty and Hatchet?” Wiggins asked. “Are we goin’ to bring them into it before we know for certain?”

Luty Belle Crookshank and her butler, Hatchet, were friends of the household. Luty was a wealthy, eccentric American who’d been a witness in one of their earliest cases. She’d then come to them with a problem of her own to be solved, and ever since, she and her butler had insisted on helping. Unfortunately, due to Luty’s illness and her need to travel to America to confer with her American bankers and lawyers, they’d missed several of the inspector’s cases, so now they were adamant about being included right from the beginning.

“I think that would be best,” Mrs. Jeffries replied. “Right, then. I take it we’re all agreed that we ought to proceed with the investigation.”

Everyone nodded their assent.

Betsy got up and headed for the stairs. She didn’t want to be alone with Smythe. “I best get upstairs. I want to get my chores done bright and early so I can get out and about.”

“I’ll do a batch of bakin’ to feed my sources.” The cook got to her feet. “The worst that can happen is, we’ll have extra if it turns out not to be a murder, but this time of year, a bit of extra sweets could come in handy.”

“Smythe, can you and Wiggins lock up, please?” Mrs. Jeffries said as she followed the maid out to the hall. She understood that Betsy wasn’t ready to be alone with her fiancé as yet, and wanted to make it easy on the lass. “Oh, and Wiggins, can you nip over to Luty’s as soon as you get up? We’ll want them here for our morning meeting.”

 
“I do hope this doesn’t turn out to be a waste of your time,” Mrs. Jeffries said as she took her place at the table the next morning.

“When will we know for certain whether or not it’s murder?” Luty Belle Crookshank asked eagerly. The elderly, gray-haired American wore a maroon day dress with white lace around the collar and cuffs. On her lap was a gray fur muff, and there was a better-than-even chance that inside that muff was a gun: a Colt .45 that Luty called a Peacemaker.

“Wiggins is going to run down to the station to take the inspector’s watch to him.” Mrs. Jeffries held up the gold pocket watch. She’d lifted it out of Witherspoon’s coat earlier that morning. “Dr. Bosworth was doing the postmortem last night, so he ought to have had a report written and sent over to the station by midmorning.”

“So when young Wiggins brings the inspector his forgotten pocket watch, he ought to be able to ascertain whether or not the victim was poisoned,” Hatchet said. He was a tall, robust man with a headful of white hair, a smooth complexion, and a devotion to Luty Belle that went beyond just serving as a butler. He was also articulate, well educated, and very clever, with his own network of resources gleaned from a past that he didn’t care to talk about.

“But the postmortem will only tell us if it’s poison, not whether it’s murder,” Smythe said. He was in a sour mood. He’d tried his best to get Betsy alone so they could talk about their situation, but he’d been stymied at every turn. Last night she’d gone upstairs with Mrs. Jeffries, and this morning he’d waited for ages on the landing for her to come out of her room, only to discover that she was down in the kitchen and had been for hours. He knew she was deliberately keeping him at bay, and it was beginning to make him angry.

“Of course it’ll be murder,” Mrs. Goodge said. “The man didn’t deliberately dose himself with foxglove.”

“It could have been that the foxglove was meant for someone else,” Betsy pointed out.

“I, for one, am going to proceed as though it’s murder and that Stephen Whitfield was the intended victim,” the cook said stoutly. “I’ve got some nice buns rising in the dry larder, a seed cake in the oven, and a set of jam tarts ready to go in as soon as the cake is done.”

“Do you have anyone coming through today?” Mrs. Jeffries asked.

“The laundry lad will be here, and there’s a butcher’s order due to arrive,” the cook replied. “But I’ve sent notes to several of my friends, and I’m sure one of them will be here for early-afternoon tea, so we mustn’t have our afternoon meeting until at least half past four. I’ve got the names of everyone who was at the dinner party, so someone coming through this kitchen ought to know something useful about one of them.” Mrs. Goodge understood the value of gossip.

“And I’m off to talk to the local shopkeepers,” Betsy announced as she got up. “By now, the fact that Whitfield died should be common knowledge.”

“Stephen Whitfield.” Luty repeated the name, her expression thoughtful. “I know I’ve heard that name before.”

“He’s probably an acquaintance of one of your friends,” Hatchet said. “Actually, if no one objects, I think I’ll see what I can learn about the Farringdons. They were the ones who brought the Bordeaux.”

“And you’ve heard their names before, haven’t you?” Luty charged. She and Hatchet were very competitive when they were on a case. Each of them reveled in finding out more information than the other.

“I may have heard them mentioned in casual conversations,” Hatchet admitted. He knew the Farringdons’ butler, but he’d die before he’d own up to it in front of Luty.

Luty snorted. “You’ve got something up your sleeve, but then again”—she grinned—“so do I.”

“Excellent. It seems we’ve all something to do to keep busy until this afternoon.” Mrs. Jeffries looked at Smythe. “Would you like to take today to rest? You’ve had a hard, long journey.”

He shook his head and got up. “I’m fine, Mrs. Jeffries. I’ve got some business of me own to take care of this morning, but I’ll be able to get on the hunt by the afternoon.” He shot Betsy a quick glance. She was concentrating on doing the buttons on her coat and didn’t look up.