Murder and Mascara

by Evelyn James

  Clara supposed it would not have taken long for information such as the murder of Niamh Owen to be transmitted. The return of Abigail Sommers to the Pavilion would have caused curiosity alone.

  “Poor woman,” Gilbert said rather perfunctorily. It was quite obvious he had seen the potential for a good story and this was overriding any real sympathy he had for Niamh. “Any suspects?”

  “I think it is safe to say that the one suspect most people would have favoured is safely out of the picture,” Clara replied cautiously.

  “Miss Sommers? Yes, difficult to murder someone from a police cell.”

  “Mr McMillan, I have found that Albion Industries has more potential enemies than Napoleon, but that is proving unhelpful. Narrowing the list is the key and I think that means looking more closely at those who have been targeted. After all, how did killing Niamh Owen really harm Albion Industries? In the scheme of things, the fact she was one of their employees is merely a side-note.”

  “You think this is more personal?” Gilbert extrapolated, a twinkle of excitement in his eye. “That would certainly make sense for the murders, except, what links the three victims? The only thing I can see is that they were all connected to Albion Industries.”

  “Or, perhaps, we could say they were all connected to someone who works for Albion?” Clara spelled out her suspicions for him. “I can make a case that the sabotage is a direct attack on Albion. But the murders puzzle me. How was killing Mr Forthclyde an attack on Albion? Even striking out at the Albion girls seems odd. If you wanted to hurt Albion Industries you would aim to go for someone important, such as Mr Grundisburgh…”

  Clara stopped, because an awful idea had just occurred to her. Gilbert watched as she paused mid-sentence, her mouth dropped open as realisation dawned.

  “Mr Grundisburgh,” she repeated. “Oh, but what if this all was about getting someone important? What if the murderer saw this as an opportunity to strike at Mr Grundisburgh while diverting attention from themselves?”

  Gilbert tilted his head to one side, attentive.

  “Perhaps you can explain that Miss Fitzgerald?” he asked.

  “Anyone can commit a murder, Mr McMillan, any fool can kill someone. It is the getting away with it that’s the hard part. When someone is murdered the first thing the police look at is the person’s known associates. The clever murderer goes to great lengths to disguise the fact that they despised the dead person, or that they could have been around at the time of the murder to commit the crime,” Clara was into her stride now. “Supposing our murderer knew that in the usual scheme of things they would be suspected if anything was to happen to their victim? Supposing the only opportunity they might have to kill them would put them under instant suspicion? And supposing they concocted an idea of how they might kill that person in a manner and place that would lead to very little suspicion falling on them?”

  “You mean, if they could lure their victim somewhere and make it look like he was killed for a very different reason to the one that was actually the motive?” Gilbert said. “Then, are you suggesting the deaths of Miss Althorpe, Mr Forthclyde and Miss Owen were mere coincidence?”

  “As I have delved more into this case it has become plain to me that Mr Grundisburgh has the potential to be connected to every aspect. The betrayal messages, for instance, I can name several people who could have felt betrayed by Mr Grundisburgh, if we exclude Mr Mokano from our suspicions. He was betrayed by Albion Industries, but he is dealing with that in a very business-like fashion and I don’t think he is foolish enough to play these silly games at the Pavilion and risk his position.

  “So, our saboteur feels ‘betrayed’ and that betrayal could easily be felt to have occurred at Mr Grundisburgh’s hands. Then we have Miss Althorpe, who is intrinsically connected to Mr Grundisburgh. He used her in the whole Pearl Pink affair. Then there is Abigail Sommers, selected by Mr Grundisburgh to head this trade fair and hated by her fellow Albion girls because she was deemed to be his favourite. Our killer placed some very damning evidence in her hotel room and placed her in a very difficult position.”

  “Why not just kill her?” Gilbert pointed out.

  “What, and lose such a useful scapegoat? Abigail was set up to take the fall for all these crimes, until Niamh was killed,” Clara paused, here was the flaw in her carefully constructed theory. Had the killer not attacked Niamh then all these crimes would have landed at Abigail’s feet. But the killer had attacked Niamh.

  “What about Mr Forthclyde? What would his connection to Mr Grundisburgh be?”

  “I don’t know, but I feel as if I almost have the key to this all. The crimes occur with the full knowledge that eventually someone from Albion’s head office will be sent down to find out what is going on. That someone will most likely be Mr Grundisburgh. There is a pattern here, I am sure of it!”

  “Then, you think Mr Grundisburgh is in very real danger?” Gilbert suggested.

  Clara hesitated. Was that what she was thinking? Perhaps, but so far no attempt had been made on his life, perhaps she was really grasping at straws.

  “There is more to this than meets the eye,” Clara persisted. “Maybe, Mr McMillan, you could investigate the matter and see if there is a connection between Mr Forthclyde and Mr Grundisburgh beyond that they worked together. And the same for Niamh Owen.”

  Gilbert nodded.

  “Strange business, cosmetics,” he mused, then he tipped his hat to Clara and headed off to begin investigating.

  Clara carried on around the Pavilion and finally found herself in Mr Taversham’s temporary work yard. There was the building foreman, surrounded by his work crew, busily reconstructing or repairing the so recently damaged boards and stands for the fair. He looked particularly miserable today. He probably had Mr Grundisburgh breathing down his neck to get the work done as fast as possible, which of course was never fast enough. Mr Taversham scowled at Clara.

  “None of the plasterwork was damaged by the banners, I checked meself,” he snapped gruffly.

  “I was actually hoping to speak to your two newest employees,” Clara answered with forced politeness.

  “You and me both!” Mr Taversham snarled. “Neither showed up today, though in the case of Dunwright that is hardly a loss, but the lad Crudd would have been a useful extra pair of hands.”

  “That is a shame,” Clara agreed, thinking that the missing workmen suggested she was on the right track. “Where did they lodge, Mr Taversham?”

  “Are you going to chase them up, now?” Mr Taversham mocked her.

  “If it suits me to do so, what does it matter to you?” Clara replied. “May I remind you Mr Taversham that as one of the committee members I have an opinion about who gets future work contracts at the Pavilion and your recent behaviour and attitude towards me is hardly endearing.”

  Mr Taversham became abruptly silent. He had crossed a line and now realised it. He also realised the potential harm he was causing himself.

  “Apologies, Miss Fitzgerald,” he said at last. “It has been a trying week.”

  “And, until the culprit behind this mischief is located, I suspect it will continue to be trying,” Clara assured him. “Which is why I am doing all in my power to find the scoundrel and stop them. Now, might you give me the lodging addresses of your two absent employees?”

  Mr Taversham pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket, it was folded and dirty. He spread it out and read off two addresses. Clara took note.

  “When were they sent notice to come to work today?” Clara asked.

  “This morning… wait!” Mr Taversham was staring over her shoulder in astonishment. “There is Dunwright right now! Well, I never, the silly fool turned up after all.”

  Clara turned around and saw a man in faded overalls wandering along the path beside the Pavilion. He seemed half lost in his thoughts as he came along, staring at the grass or the sky and not hurrying himself. He might have been out for an afternoon stroll.

  “Oi! Dunwright!�
� Mr Taversham yelled furiously. “Get over here!”

  Ian Dunwright looked up and gave an inane smile. He seemed undisturbed by Taversham’s gruff tone and did not speed up his pace as he walked across the grass.

  “Sorry to be so late,” he apologised genially to his employer. “My landlady went out shopping and didn’t give me the message I was wanted until she returned home a little while ago. I bet you thought I wasn’t coming.”

  Taversham muttered something under his breath about wishing he hadn’t come. Clara could just hear it.

  “Look, now you are here, go make us all a cup of tea. And while you are at it, talk to Miss Fitzgerald will you? She’s one of the Committee members.”

  Thus Taversham dismissed the two people who annoyed him the most that morning. Ian Dunwright did not bother to ask why he should talk to Clara, he just gave her a smile and amiably showed her the way through a back door into the workmen’s break room. He turned on the stove and started to boil a kettle.

  “Don’t mind Mr Taversham,” Dunwright said as he made tea. “He has a good heart really. After all, he gave me this job.”

  “You don’t strike me as a workman, Mr Dunwright,” Clara said, taking a seat on an old wooden crate that had once contained display materials for the trade fair.

  “I like working with my hands,” Dunwright answered.

  Clara took a good look at him as he made the tea and hummed to himself. His overalls were faded, but extremely clean. No stains or tears that you would expect on work clothes. Aside from their paleness, they looked quite new. Clara started to wonder if they had been deliberately faded to give the appearance of use. Perhaps washed over and over to strip out the colour, without taking into account that work clothes did not just fade but suffered the marks of industry as well. Ian Dunwright did not strike Clara as someone who regularly worked in the building industry, but he did strike her as someone trying to pretend he was someone else.

  “I think I will be glad when this fair is over,” Clara said lightly. “It has been far too much complication, and all this sabotage has made me quite nervous. The Pavilion is my responsibility and preserving it for future generations is my primary concern. I would hate to see it damaged because of this event.”

  “I don’t think the saboteur means any harm to the Pavilion,” Dunwright said, offering her a cup of tea.

  Clara took it. The mug she had been offered was badly cracked, but still held tea without leaking. She found Dunwright’s statement curious.

  “How can we know what this saboteur intends?” she said.

  “I think he has been very careful not to harm the Pavilion so far. That is a good thing,” Dunwright still had that placid smile on his face, rather like he knew some secret that gave him confidence. “I like old buildings. They feel like they have souls.”

  “This building certainly has one,” Clara nodded. “That is why I worry about it so much. For instance, to my horror I learned that someone had secretly entered the most important room in the Pavilion, the prince’s bedroom, and spent time there smoking and apparently carving a piece of woodwork.”

  Dunwright’s face suddenly lost its smile and a frown crossed his brow. He looked upset too.

  “That is awful. Smoke does so much damage to soft furnishings and wallpaper,” an angry look flickered over his face. “Why would someone do that?”

  “People do not think,” Clara told him, surprised at his sudden appearance of outrage. “Do you not smoke, Mr Dunwright?”

  “Never!” Dunwright looked offended. “I read a paper once about how a man’s veins become clogged with soot if he smokes heavily. Why would I want that?”

  “A paper?” Clara asked curiously. “As in an academic paper?”

  Dunwright blinked, then seemed to fluster a fraction.

  “I like reading,” he said, trying to assuage her interest. “I read anything I can find. I ought to take Mr Taversham his tea out now.”

  He picked up a large wooden tray and set mugs on it, along with a sugar bowl, before heading purposefully outside. Clara followed him back out into the warm sunshine.

  “I didn’t mean to imply that it was odd for a workman to read,” she said to Dunwright, trying to renew their conversation. “It is good to hear, that is all.”

  Ian Dunwright paused in the middle of the path. He stared at the assorted mugs filled with brown tea which he had haphazardly spilled as he walked.

  “I know people think I am strange,” he said softly. “I suppose I am a little peculiar. My mind tends to drift off and I have lost a lot of jobs because I become distracted thinking about this and that. But I know the difference between right and wrong, which a lot of folk can’t say. For instance, one of the lads hammered the pin for a banner right into some ornamental plasterwork in the Pavilion. I told him that was wrong, though he didn’t much care.”

  “I saw that,” Clara said. “I complained to Mr Taversham.”

  “Not everyone understands right and wrong,” Dunwright continued. “It’s wrong to kill people, for instance.”

  Dunwright adjusted the tray in his hands.

  “I don’t do things that are wrong.”

  Ian Dunwright ambled off and Clara suspected that in his own unique fashion he had made it plain to her that he was not the killer in the Pavilion. That didn’t let him off the hook for the other crimes, of course.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Clara knew it was urgent she seek out Arthur Crudd and discover why he had not shown up for work that day. It could be that he had a perfectly innocent reason for not responding to Mr Taversham’s message, on the other hand, he might just be the suspect she was looking for. The trouble was, Clara felt torn, because she also had a duty to Captain O’Harris and she wanted to go to the hospital and discover what had happened since her conversation with Dr Cutt. In many situations Clara put her duty as a detective first and her personal affairs second, but on this occasion she simply could not. O’Harris needed her and, unlike the murders at the Pavilion which had the Brighton police force also taking an interest, the brave captain only had her and now Dr Cutt. She knew where her real duty lay.

  Clara arrived at the hospital on edge. She wasn’t sure what to expect, but feared trouble. Dr Holland was not a generous or kindly person and he would know that Dr Cutt had arrived because she had summoned him. Dr Holland would be angry and would make life as difficult as possible for her. There were still a couple of newspapermen waiting outside the hospital, tasked by their editor to get an interview with Captain O’Harris. Their comrades had fled the scene, getting whiff of a more exciting, or at least more accessible, story over at the Pavilion. Clara slipped past the remaining two without any difficulty. They seemed more inclined to smoke and enjoy the summer sunshine then to worry about who was going in and out of the hospital.

  At the front desk Clara asked if Dr Cutt had been in. The receptionist admitted she did not know, having only just come on duty. It was close to visiting time, so Clara thanked the woman and headed in the direction of the wards, veering off at the last moment to head towards Ward D. If the receptionist noticed, she did not say anything.

  Clara felt her stomach knot as she approached Ward D’s locked doors. There was something so imposing and depressing about those doors, even though they looked no different to any others in the hospital. Perhaps it was just the thought of who was behind them that made her anxious? Clara rang the bell for assistance. A male attendant, not the one she had encountered before, opened the door a fraction to observe her. Clara guessed, with the nature of the patients in the ward, it was best to have male staff always on hand. There would be patients prone to fits who would need restraining, and those of a violent or simply difficult demeanour. Patients might need to be lifted or carried. Certainly, if they kept them drugged like Captain O’Harris all the time, they would be incapable of moving themselves. She supposed the main criteria for working on Ward D was to be of a strong physique.

  “I have come to see Captain O’Harris,�
�� Clara said, trying to master some of the force she had had in her voice the night before. However, her anxiety was stripping it from her, making her sound noticeably more hesitant.

  “We don’t accept visitors,” the attendant told her bluntly.

  “I am not a visitor,” Clara said, regaining some of her firmness. “I am a member of the committee and I am here to inspect the conditions in which Captain O’Harris is residing.”

  Clara did not illuminate the attendant as to precisely which committee she was on, she doubted the Pavilion Preservation Committee had much clout in the hospital.

  “I have been informed of a complaint concerning Captain O’Harris’ treatment and have come to inspect the situation for myself. With all the furore about the captain’s miraculous return, the hospital does not need anyone spreading lies about the quality of care, do we?” Clara was beginning to sound more and more like her old mathematics teacher, she wasn’t sure she liked it, but she had to admit the woman had been excellent at controlling even the most unruly of students, so perhaps there was something in it.

  The male attendant hovering at the door was looking unsure. He clearly didn’t like the sound of ‘complaints’ and ‘lies’. Perhaps he was thinking of his own position. Ward D was a place where the forgotten were usually sent and no one paid much attention to what was going on there. Supposing the attendant felt his own behaviour had not been as exemplary as it could have been towards his charges? Clara decided to pursue that idea.

  “I am sure nothing untoward has occurred here, but people come up with all sorts of strange notions, especially about locked wards,” Clara explained. “People think the patients are treated badly, left sedated rather than actually helped. I have even heard Ward D referred to as the first step towards Mowbray Asylum. Such talk is always a worry. Rumours can quickly become established as ‘facts’ among the uneducated. Need I elaborate on the trouble that could cause us all? Why, it would be ghastly! People could lose their jobs for no real reason. Better to nip this all in the bud, don’t you think?”