by Evelyn James
Clara was almost trembling with excitement as she replaced the contents of the suitcase. She sensed that here was the key to all this drama, here was the clue she had so desperately needed. She was just picking up a cloth bag to place in the case, when it slipped through her excited fingers and expelled its contents. Clara was amazed to see what looked like long brown fingers protruding from the bag. They were, in fact, cigars. Expensive ones. Not the sort of thing young Crudd could afford. Clara picked them up and sniffed them. She was thinking of the cigar butt that had set the Pearl Pink stall alight and the heavy fog of smoke left behind by the probable killer in the prince’s bedroom. Cigars were not everyone’s cup of tea, find the person who smoked these and you would be inches away from solving this complicated affair.
Clara packed the suitcase, clicked down the clasps and walked back downstairs. The landlady was loitering in the hallway, clearly intending to waylay Clara on her way out.
“What are you doing with that?” she demanded as she saw Clara had the suitcase.
“These are Crudd’s belongings,” Clara answered simply. “I am taking them so I might restore them to him when he is found.”
“Oh no you don’t!” the landlady barked. “I need those to pawn! Crudd has left me in the lurch, those are mine fair and square.”
Clara really did not have the energy to explain the realities of the law to this woman. She gave a sigh. The suitcase was coming with her.
“You have no claim over Crudd’s belongings, but if it makes you feel better I shall pay his room rent for today, therefore you are not out of pocket.”
The landlady started to open her mouth to protest, but Clara had produced her purse and the promise of money had silenced the irate words the woman had intended to yell. She fell quiet instead, clearly torn between demanding the suitcase and the thought of instant money. She was doing speedy calculations in her head as to the potential value of Crudd’s belongings and whether their pawn value was greater than her usual room rental rates.
“How much do you charge for a day’s rent?” Clara asked, her purse open in her hand.
The landlady seemed to gag a little, clearly indecisive as to what to demand. Her eyes jumped from the suitcase to Clara’s purse and back again. Tired of the debate Clara took some coins from her purse.
“Here are five shillings,” she said, handing the money to the landlady. “I should think that amply covers your rent rates, especially considering the low wages poor Crudd was earning. If you do happen to hear from him, you might inform him that his suitcase is in safe hands and he should go to the police station and enquire about it.”
The landlady’s eyes flashed greedily, she looked about ready to demand more money, but her fear that demanding too much would lose her what she already had stilled her tongue. Clara moved past her.
“There’s enough here for supper too,” the landlady seemed to have had an unusual pang of conscience. “I should make you something before you go. A cup of tea at least?”
“That won’t be necessary,” Clara assured her. “Thank you for your assistance.”
She hurried out the door before Crudd’s landlady started to think twice about letting his suitcase out of her sight. There was no knowing how quickly her fickle mind would start to turn over the potential contents of the case and just how much they might be worth. Clara wanted to be out of the way before that happened. She headed along the road as fast as she dared without actually running. People watched her go by, but Clara did not acknowledge them. She was heading in one direction alone, straight to Brighton’s police station to show her find to Inspector Park-Coombs. Arthur Crudd, whichever way you looked at it, had some serious explaining to do about his luggage. Whether that made him a murderer was another matter. Clara clutched the suitcase a little tighter. She was on the right track, she was sure of it.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Can I see Inspector Park-Coombs?” Clara asked the desk sergeant at the police station.
They were not on the best terms and he was often deliberately awkward when she made a request. Today was no different.
“Not in, is he,” the desk sergeant told her with great satisfaction.
“And where might he be, then?” Clara asked with the first hint of a sigh of annoyance.
“Not sure I should tell you that,” the desk sergeant gave an exaggerated impression of lawful integrity.
They might have reached an impasse had not Police Constable Wood just then come rushing into the station.
“Am I too late? Has the Inspector already gone to the Pavilion?” the constable asked in a panic.
The desk sergeant glowered at him. Clara gave him a cheerful smile.
“Constable,” she said, turning around, “I am now heading to the Pavilion, might you accompany me?”
Police Constable Wood, abashed by the desk sergeant’s glare, was only too glad to help Clara and escape the station. They both emerged back into the summer sunshine and turned towards the Pavilion.
“What has occurred Constable?” Clara asked as they walked briskly. “There has been no great harm to the building I hope?”
“No miss,” Constable Wood promised. “I was out on an errand when everything happened. I only knew something was going on because Constable Tuppin spotted me and said the Inspector had called out several names of constables who were to go with him to the Pavilion to make an arrest, and I was one of the names. I’ve been doing duty up there on the door. I was worried I would be in trouble when I learned I had been asked for when I was not there.”
“You cannot be in two places at once,” Clara reminded him. “I should know, I have tried. But you say the Inspector is about to make an arrest?”
“Yes miss.”
“An arrest of who?”
“I don’t know, miss.”
Clara was wondering if the inspector had come to the same conclusions as her about Arthur Crudd, perhaps he had even been sighted at the Pavilion and the alarm raised?
They reached the Pavilion, it was now late afternoon but the trade fair was to be open for a couple of hours as yet. People were still milling in and out of the door. Clara excused herself as she pushed past a man and woman blocking the entrance with Constable Wood trailing her. Inside the main hall, she glanced around for someone who might know what was going on and sighted Abigail. She waved to her. Abigail came over looking excited.
“The Inspector knows who is behind all this awfulness,” she declared in a whisper to Clara. “He is arresting the fellow as we speak.”
“Who is he arresting?” Clara asked urgently.
“Why, Jeremiah Cook, of course!” Abigail announced. “He was caught red-handed trying to destroy one of the large trade stands. It is the one displaying hand cream. You must have seen it because it is so tall. Mr Cook had snuck behind it and was removing some of the nails holding the stand together. Had not a lady’s small dog disappeared under the same stand then no one would have known. As it was, when one of the Albion girls moved the skirt of the stand to retrieve the dog, she spotted Cook’s feet! She gave a cry and Mr Grundisburgh came over. He recognised Cook at once and it was obvious what he was up to because he had a hammer in one hand and a pocket full of nails that he had just removed. The stand would have collapsed when someone bumped into it and caused such a commotion!”
Abigail was elated by the discovery. She clearly now assumed the trade fair could carry on without any problems. Clara, forever cynical, was still in two minds about whether that was the case or not.
“Where is the Inspector?” she asked.
“Mr Grundisburgh escorted Cook into the workmen’s break room and then sent the constable on the door to fetch the Inspector. He only arrived a moment ago.”
Clara headed for the break room, wondering what she would encounter beyond its door. She knocked, deciding that now was not the time to barge in, and the inspector’s familiar voice summoned her inside. Clara and Constable Wood entered the small room. It was already quite pack
ed with Inspector Park-Coombs, Mr Grundisburgh and Mr Taversham surrounding Jeremiah Cook. Clara looked into the face of Ian Dunwright and nodded to herself.
“You never did strike me as a workman,” she said.
Jeremiah Cook, alias Ian Dunwright, looked up and smiled wanly at Clara.
“I didn’t damage the Pavilion,” he assured her.
“Now, Mr Cook, I can continue what I was saying,” Inspector Park-Coombs said gruffly, slightly annoyed at the interruption. “I am arresting you for criminal vandalism and for the murders of Miss Althorpe, Mr Forthclyde and Miss Owen.”
“I haven’t killed anyone!” Jeremiah Cook squeaked, looking appalled by the suggestion. “I just hung banners and defaced Albion property. I don’t know anything about these deaths, I swear.”
“Really Mr Cook!” Mr Grundisburgh spluttered in amazement. “How can you deny it? You and only you have been in this building on a nightly basis causing so much harm. Quite clearly you turned your hand to murder when it suited you.”
Mr Grundisburgh was so outraged that he had taken on a disturbing red colour and looked half ready to boil over or have a heart attack, whichever came first. Clara decided it was a good time to interrupt again.
“Supposing Mr Cook did not kill those people?” she said.
“Clara,” Park-Coombs puffed out his cheeks in exasperation, “the man has been about this building causing havoc. I daresay he didn’t plan the murders, they were probably spur of the moment things. Don’t forget, Mr Forthclyde was lying on top of one of Cook’s betrayal messages on the dining table!”
“I never killed him!” Cook said miserably. “And I never wrote a message on any of the furniture. That might damage it and that would be wrong.”
“And Mr Cook has a very strong sense of right and wrong,” Clara spoke, her voice softer. “Do you not, Mr Cook?”
“I haven’t ever damaged the Pavilion,” Cook bleated, helplessly looking to Clara for assistance. “I know someone else has been sneaking about the place. I have sensed them, but never seen them.”
“So now we have an invisible killer on our hands?” Inspector Park-Coombs scoffed. “Come on Cook, no more lies!”
“I don’t think he is lying Inspector,” Clara said firmly. “Mr Cook is a very principled man, despite what we have seen him do here these last few days. And I imagine Mr Cook viewed his acts of sabotage as the right thing to do to raise awareness of not only his betrayal by Albion, but also his treachery towards Mr Mokano.”
Cook suddenly began to sob.
“That was wrong,” he cried. “So awfully wrong. Miss Althorpe convinced me it was not, saying I was being misused and I believed her. I thought, when I left the company, I was only taking my ideas. I had barely begun work on the Pearl Pink, it was just a notion I had one day when I was playing about with some colours. I didn’t think it counted, but now I realise it did and that I should never have taken the idea away from Mr Mokano. I am so, so sorry and I would tell him so. I helped Albion steal the Pearl Pink from him.”
“Shut up!” Mr Grundisburgh was almost hopping in anger. “All this nonsense, nothing was stolen, nothing! Mr Cook came to us of his own volition and his ideas were dreamt up in our own laboratories.”
“You lured him away with deceit, Mr Grundisburgh,” Clara said carefully. “You played on his emotions and used him wickedly. I have no doubt Mr Cook was an unwitting partner in the Pearl Pink affair, but you knew exactly what you were doing. You must have had a spy in their labs who spotted what Cook was about. You realised that if you let him do anymore work on the idea then Mr Mokano could make a case for it being created for his company. So you stole Cook away as quickly as you could.”
“That sounds so underhand. It was nothing of the sort. I offered Mr Cook a job, he is a very clever researcher.”
“Then why did you fire him so soon after the completion of the Pearl Pink project? It seems rather sinister, under the circumstances?”
“Mr Cook had warnings! He was dithering in his work, idling about! Wasting our time and money!”
“I can confirm that is what he is like,” Mr Taversham huffed from the sidelines. “But I would also state that I never pegged Cook for a murderer.”
Inspector Park-Coombs grumbled under his breath.
“So, you want me to believe that Cook would damage property but not kill people because the latter was wrong? Where is the logic in that?”
“Mr Cook can explain,” Clara said stoutly. “Mr Cook, how did you come to decide that sabotaging Albion’s trade fair would not be wrong?”
Jeremiah Cook shuffled in the chair he had been sat in by the inspector when he was taken to the room. He thought for a moment, then looked up at Clara.
“I felt that Albion Industries had used me and made me betray Mr Mokano. I felt awful for that because Mr Mokano was always good to me and employed me straight out of university. I studied chemistry, you know, only I didn’t get the best results because I tended to get distracted. That has always been my problem…”
“Stick to the point, Cook,” Park-Coombs grumbled.
Cook sniffled through his tears.
“I knew no one was interested in what became of me, not even Miss Althorpe. I just wanted someone to know what had happened. I knew about the trade fair and I thought there would be no better place to get my message across. I told myself I would only use the Pearl Pinks in my acts of sabotage. That was my creation, and therefore my property, so to speak, and you can’t vandalise your own property, can you? I made the banners and I used Pearl Pink to write on the floor. I thought people would listen, maybe someone would write about the sabotage in the paper, but nothing happened. So, I persuaded myself that as Albion was such a wicked company, hurting the rest of their products would not be wrong. I know that was stretching a point, but I was getting desperate. But I never touched products belonging to other companies, nor did I damage the Pavilion, or kill anyone!”
“Maybe you ‘stretched the point’ to persuade yourself murder was right too?” Inspector Park-Coombs suggested.
“No!” Cook cried out. “Why would I?”
“Let’s start with Miss Althorpe, she betrayed you, perhaps it seemed appropriate to kill her? Or you just acted in the heat of the moment?”
“No!” Cook looked desperately to Clara. “I couldn’t kill Esther, she was the love of my life. She broke my heart, but I never ever harmed her!”
“I believe Mr Cook,” Clara announced, earning herself a scowl from the inspector. “It does not fit with his temperament to murder people. In any case, I think if he had it would have left him emotionally disordered. Mr Cook is not a person who can kill and live with the guilt. Besides, he had no motive for either Mr Forthclyde or Miss Owen.”
“He needed the key off Miss Owen to get in here to cause havoc!” Mr Grundisburgh countered angrily. “You said yourself Clara that her key was missing and the person who murdered her probably took it.”
“I didn’t need a key to get in!” Cook said quickly. “I hid inside when the doors were locked. That is how I have always hidden in here. Mr Taversham will confirm it, because I was always the first man to be inside when work began.”
Cook looked desperately to his employer. For a moment Taversham did not want to assist him, the fool had caused him a lot of trouble, but he could not quite abandon him. With a sigh, he said.
“That’s true enough. I always thought it strange that I never saw Cook with the other men waiting outside, but he was always the first inside the Pavilion. It was about the only thing I saw in his favour, his punctuality.”
“There has been someone else in this building,” Clara persisted. “And I have proof.”
She put the suitcase on the floor with a sharp thud. The inspector raised an eyebrow.
“I wondered why you were carrying that.”
“Inside this luggage you will find the exact same cigars used to set the Pearl Pink stand alight, a crime I think not of Cook’s doing.”
�
�I never caused a fire,” Cook agreed quickly. “It could have damaged the Pavilion!”
“Equally, Cook does not smoke, but someone was in the prince’s bedroom smoking. While they were there they whittled a stave from a Cushing’s Corset into a weapon. I can’t tell you why they killed Forthclyde in the way they did, or what caused them to attack Miss Althorpe and Miss Owen, but I think this person is our killer.”
“And who owns that suitcase?” Park-Coombs asked.
“Arthur Crudd,” Clara declared, as she had expected everyone was surprised, especially Mr Taversham.
“The lad?” he said. “But why?”
“I don’t know,” Clara admitted. “Perhaps only Arthur Crudd can explain his motives. Unfortunately he has been missing since last night.”
“Since the murder of Miss Owen,” Park-Coombs sighed. “And I suppose Mr Cook you will state you were locked inside this building the entire time that crime was being committed.”
“Yes,” Cook said at once. “I only slipped out a little while after everyone had arrived. I was trying to avoid Mr Grundisburgh because I knew he would recognise me.”
“Well, I am still arresting you, but in the meantime I’ll have my constables start a search for Arthur Crudd. Perhaps the fellow has come to some misfortune and your suspicions are ill founded Clara.”
Clara doubted that, but she allowed the inspector his moment. Time enough to prove him wrong once Crudd was found. Mr Grundisburgh was unimpressed.
“I know no one by the name of Crudd,” he snarled. “Why would this person wish Albion any harm? I think you are being blinded by compassion Miss Fitzgerald!”
Clara had never been accused of being overly compassionate towards a murderer.