Mrs. Jeffries Pinches the Post (17 page)

“You’ll sort it out, sir,” ^Barnes said easily. “You always do.”

“Gracious, I do hope so. But it doesn’t look good. We’ve searched the whole area and we still haven’t found the murder weapon …”

“We probably won’t, sir,” Barnes interrupted gently. “Dr. Bos worth agrees with Dr. Boyer’s opinion. He also thinks that from the size and shape of the entry wound, the killer probably used a common old butcher knife.” Barnes had “unofficially” asked their good friend. Dr. Bosworth, to have a look at the body after the police surgeon had finished the postmortem. It wasn’t that he didn’t think Dr. Boyer was competent; he was. But Bosworth had spent a year practicing medicine in San Francisco. Apparently they had quite a lot of murder there and, consequently, he’d become somewhat of an expert on determining what kind of wound was made with a particular kind of weapon. He’d helped them on a number of their cases, and the doctor had invariably been right in his assessments.

“I know.” The inspector sighed. “Which means it’s probably sitting in someone’s kitchen drawer, and we’ll never find it.”

“You’ve solved lots of cases without a murder weapon,” Barnes pointed out.

“
We’ve
solved lots of cases,” Witherspoon corrected, I certainly didn’t do it alone. You and everyone else on the force did as much as I did.” He held up his hand as Barnes started to protest. “Everyone does their fair share, Constable. I couldn’t solve anything without the information you and the other constables come up with. Mind you, this time, we haven’t had much useful information at all. Even the house-to-house interviews haven’t yielded much. No one saw or heard anything except for a few mysterious footsteps.”

“It doesn’t seem to make much sense, does it, sir?” Barnes commented. “But we’ve not spoken to everyone as yet. Something will turn up. It always does.” He pointed to the house at the end of the row. “There’s the house, sir. Let’s hope they’re home and that this isn’t a wasted trip.”

Barnes raised his fist to knock. But before he could strike the blow, the door flew open and a tall, thin-faced man stared out at them. “I’ve been expecting you,” he said. “I’m John Windemere.” He pulled the door open and stepped backward. “Come inside, please.”

They went into a cramped hallway. A coat rack loaded with jackets, caps, coats and scarves was just inside the door. Next to it stood a tall mottled brass vase with umbrellas sticking out the top. The walls were papered in faded yellow-and-gold stripes, and there was a threadbare brown carpet runner on the floor.

John Windemere closed the door and pushed past the two policemen. “Let’s go into the parlor,” he said gruffly.

They followed him into a room as dismal as the hall. The furniture was as old and threadbare as the carpet. Limp white-lace curtains, now turned gray, covered two dirty windows and a fine layer of dust covered the wood surfaces of the end tables and the one lone bookcase on the far wall.

Windemere flopped down on the settee. “I suppose you want to know where my brother and I were on the night that Harrison Nye was murdered,” he said.

Witherspoon and Barnes exchanged looks. It was rare to find someone who got right to the point, so to speak. Then the inspector said, “That would be very helpful information, sir.”

“You can’t pin this on either of us. We’ve the best alibi one can have.” Windemere smiled thinly. “We were at the Marylebone Police Station.”

Barnes whipped out his notebook. “Were you under arrest?”

Windemere gave a short, harsh bark of a laugh. “Why else would one spend the night in such a place. Of course we were under arrest. But it wasn’t our fault. We were attacked. Then the police had the sheer, unmitigated gall to arrest my brother and I instead of the real culprits.”

Witherspoon frowned. “Could you give us a few more details, sir? Were you attacked by ruffians?” He didn’t think that was the case; if it had been, it would have been the ruffians who’d been arrested, not the Windemere brothers.

“Ruffians. I should say so, but because they were dressed nicely and spoke with the proper accent, the police took their version of what happened as the truth.”

“Why don’t you tell us your version, sir?” Barnes suggested calmly. “And where is your brother, sir? Is he about?”

“My brother is at work, Constable,” Windemere replied. “He clerks for a legal firm in Earls Court. He’ll not be home till six.”

Witherspoon’s lower back began to throb. “May we sit down, Mr. Windemere? It appears as if you’ve quite a bit to tell us.”

Wiggins smiled at the housemaid carrying the wicker basket and knew he’d struck gold. “Hortense is a nice name.” he said. “It fits you very nicely. Would you like me to carry your basket?”

Hortense, who’d been walking a mile a minute since Wiggins had “accidentally” run into her coming out of the Daggett house, considered his offer. “Well, it is getting heavy, and it’s quite a long ways to go yet. Here.” She thrust the basket into his waiting hands. ‘Thanks ever so much.”

He was surprised by how heavy it was. The top was covered with a white tea towel. “What’s in ‘ere?”

She made a face, reached over and flipped the tea towel back. A large, brown bottle was nestled snugly in a cradle of packed towels.

“What’s that?” Wiggins asked in surprise. “An empty bottle?”

“That’s right,” Hortense replied, “I’ve got to drag this great, heavy thing all the way to Cromwell Road. Can you believe the foolishness of some people? Mr. Daggett, that’s who I work for, he’s one of those people who think they’re on death’s door all the time. He thinks this tonic keeps him healthy. It’s nothing more than whiskey mixed with a few herbs, but he swears by the stuff. Some old woman makes it up for him, and, wouldn’t you know, he ran out of it this morning. I don’t usually have to go get it, but what with Nelda and her new husband showing up and havin’ words with Mrs. Benchley, things got all mixed up. Instead of the footman goin’ to get His Lordship’s ruddy potion, I got stuck doin’ it. It’s not fair. That old woman lives a good mile away, and once this stupid bottle is full, it’ll be even heavier comin’ back. If I didn’t need this position so badly, I’d do just what Nelda did and run off without a word to anyone. Mind you, I don’t have a young man to marry now, do I?”

Wiggins wasn’t sure how to proceed. On the one hand, he knew this girl was a mine of information, on the other hand, she looked to be a bit annoyed. Females, he’d observed, could be unpredictable when they were angry. He wanted her to talk to him, not box his ears. But there was too much at stake to back off. He had to know what had happened. He decided to proceed with caution.

“I bet you could have someone if you wanted,” he said softly. He hoped he was saying the right thing. “I’m not tryin’ to be forward, miss, but you’re awfully pretty.” It isn’t exactly a lie, he thought. She’s not really ugly. If she smiled a bit and put on some weight, she’d be quite nice-looking.

She stopped dead in her tracks and stared at him. Wiggins’s heart sank. This girl had looked in a mirror recently.

“Do you mean that?” she asked.

Wiggins nodded. “Course I do.”

A slow smile crept over her face, and she did, indeed, become prettier. “That’s awfully kind of you. Where did you say you worked?” She took his arm and they started walking.

“Uh, I didn’t. But Twork near Holland Park, I’m a footman of sorts.”

“That’s nice. Is today your day out?” She smiled coyly and batted her eyelashes.

Wiggins had the feeling he might end up regretting this morning’s snooping. Hortense might be a very nice girl, but he wasn’t really interested in her, only in what she had to tell him about the Daggett household. “Uh, yeah. Actually, I don’t get much time away from my work. But sometimes I go out on Saturdays …” It was a safe bet that a housemaid wouldn’t get a Saturday afternoon off from her duties. They almost always got a day off in the middle of the week and Sunday mornings for church.

“That’s too bad,” she continued. “My afternoon out is Wednesday. Mind you, now that Nelda’s gone for sure, I might be able to get Saturday afternoon off as well. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

“Uh, yeah, it sure would. Who’s Nelda?”

Betsy smiled at the girl sitting next to her on the park bench. “Now don’t worry, I’m sure that you’ll still have your position. Mrs. Nye isn’t going to sell the house right away, is she?”

Arlene Hill, a tiny woman with a narrow face, dark brown eyes and olive complexion, shrugged her thin shoulders. “Who knows what she’ll do? Now that he’s gone, she’s her own mistress, isn’t she?”

Betsy, who hadn’t had much luck at all on this case, had finally done something right. She’d gone to the Nye house just to have a look at it, get the lay of the land, so to speak, and she’d seen this girl coming out of the side servants’ entrance. She’d followed her, of course, and then struck up a conversation with her when she’d been gazing in a shop window. As it turned out this was Arlene Hill’s afternoon out and she had no one to spend her few free hours with. Betsy had told her it was her day out as well and suggested they take a walk around Hyde Park. It hadn’t taken Betsy long to get the conversation around to the recent murder of Arlene’s late master. Arlene was a bit shy at first, but under Betsy’s easy approach, she soon had the girl talking freely. As a matter of fact, by the time they had reached the park bench, the girl was talking a blue streak. Arlene was lonely. She didn’t have a lot of close friends in the household. Nye’s rule about the servants gossiping about the master and mistress apparently had the effect of virtually shutting people up altogether.

“Most women don’t like to leave their homes,” Betsy said conversationally. “But mind you, you never know what people will do when they’re grief-stricken.”

Arlene laughed. “Grief-stricken? Her? Not bloomin’ likely.”

Betsy pretended to be shocked. “Oh dear, the master and mistress didn’t get along? That does make it hard sometimes. Especially for those of us who have to work for them.”

‘They got on all right,” she replied, “but now that he’s dead, she can do what she likes. She couldn’t when she was married to him, could she?”

“Why not? I thought you said the family was rich.”

“He had plenty,” Arlene replied. “But she hadn’t a farthing. Oh, she’s from a toff-nosed family, that’s for sure, just like her cousin. But they’re both poor as church mice. Mr. Nye was the one with the money, wasn’t he? Now it’s all hers. I know that for a fact because I overheard her tellin’ Mr. Bancroft how they’d never have to worry again, how he’d left it all to her.”

“Was Mr. Nye a mean husband, then?” Betsy asked.

Arlene looked thoughtful. “He wasn’t mean, but you could tell he kept a tight fist on the purse.”

Betsy snorted. “That sounds like most men.”

“But not all of ‘em are like that.” Arlene laughed. ‘The last family I worked for, the missus spent like a drunken sailor and her husband never said a word about it. Mr. Nye would pay the bills, but he always made her squirm a bit, asked her questions about each and every thing she’d bought. You could tell she didn’t like it. She was always in a bad mood after she’d been into his study at the end of the month.” Arlene laughed again. “But I’ve got no reason to complain. Come the end of this month, she’ll not be answerin’ to him anymore, at least that’s what I heard her tellin’ Mr. Bancroft.”

Betsy wanted to steer the conversation along to the night of the murder. “It must be frightening, living in a house where the master’s been stabbed to death.”

“Oh no, it’s exciting. Now that he’s dead, we can talk about him all we like,” Arlene said. “It’s not like before. Like I told you when we were walking over here, we had to be real careful what we said around that house, even to each other. He was a bit of an old preacher about us gossipin’. Mind you, we do have to be careful. It wasn’t just Mr. Nye that didn’t want us talkin’; she’s almost as bad as he was.”

Betsy tried to think of what else to ask. She wasn’t surprised by the Nyes’ rule of silence. It was probably the sort of silly rule most rich houses would have if they thought they had a chance of making it work properly. She was rather amazed at how well it had apparently worked at the Nye house. But now wasn’t the time to discuss that. “I guess you’re right. As long as you knew the killer isn’t in the house with you, it would be exciting.”

“I was a bit disappointed that that nice-looking Constable Griffiths didn’t want to ask me a few questions.” Arlene sighed. “He’s got ever such nice ginger-colored hair.”

“He didn’t speak to you?”

“No.”

“So you didn’t talk to a policeman at all?” Betsy pressed. She was sure that couldn’t be right. Inspector Witherspoon was very conscientious. He would expect everyone in the victim’s household to be interviewed, especially the servants.

“Oh I spoke to Constable Griffiths, but only for half a second. He got called away to take care of something, then Mr. Duffy sent me upstairs to air out the top bedrooms. By the time I got back downstairs, the police had gone.” Arlene smiled slyly. ‘Too bad for him, that’s what I say. There’s plenty I could have told the police about that night.”

The afternoon was getting old by the time Witherspoon and Barnes were finished verifying the Windemere brothers’ alibi at the Marylebone Police Station. They came out onto the busy high street. A cold breeze had swept in from the north and the air was heavy with the feel of rain. The inspector looked up at the gathering clouds. “It’s almost teatime, Constable. Let’s go back to Upper Edmonton Gardens and have a cuppa. What do you say? It’ll be better than anything we can get in a tea shop or a cafe. We can pick up some umbrellas as well. I think we’re going to need them before the day is out.”

Barnes’s craggy face split into a grin. “You’ll not have to ask me twice, sir. Do you think Mrs. Goodge has made scones?”

“I do hope so.” Witherspoon waved at a passing hansom. ‘There’s quite a good chance of it, you know. She always seems to bake a lot when I’m on a murder case.”

The cab pulled up to the curb and they climbed inside. “Number twenty-two Upper Edmonton Gardens,” Witherspoon called to the driver. “It’s going to be a very long day for us,” he said as he leaned back against the seat. “We’ve got to review the rest of those house-to-house reports, and I think it might be a good idea to have another interview with Oscar Daggett.”