by Evelyn James
“Again, we very much appreciate that you went to his aid,” Clara smiled at Robert, then she pulled one of her business cards from her handbag. “If you remember anything that might be useful, or maybe if you hear something, this is how you can contact me.”
She pushed the card across the table towards him. Robert did not pick it up at once. He looked at the slip of card as if it might bite him.
“It says you are a private detective?” He said, with a hint of accusation in his voice.
“I am,” Clara answered. “But I am also a friend of Private Peterson, and I hope to use my experience to unravel this mystery. Else, someone stands to get away with murder.”
Robert said nothing, he was just staring at the card on the table.
“We can let ourselves out,” Clara told him in a cheery voice. “We have disturbed your dinner arrangements too long.”
They headed out into the corridor and to the yard. Clara half-expected Robert to follow them and tell them something he had suddenly ‘remembered’ about the attack on Peterson, unfortunately he did not appear and Clara was a touch disappointed. She didn’t like it when she was wrong.
They stepped back out into the alley, which was still eerily deserted. There was not even a stray cat prowling about.
“Something is wrong about this place,” Clara glanced up and down. “People are worried about something and have learned to mind their own business.”
“You think that is why Peterson was hurt? Because he stumbled across something he shouldn’t have?” O’Harris asked.
Clara was worried by the hopefulness in his tone.
“I don’t know why Peterson was attacked,” Clara explained. “I just know that something feels odd about this whole situation. People are scared of showing too much curiosity, or being seen in this alley. You ask me, there is a person going about causing a lot of anxiety to this neighbourhood. Whether that makes them a potential killer, I am not so sure.”
“But you will figure it all out, won’t you Clara,” O’Harris’ face fell as he picked up her uncertainty.
“I’ll figure it out,” Clara promised him, though she was worried just what sort of answer she might discover. “There are lots of questions, but I shall solve them all.”
O’Harris relaxed.
“What now?” He asked.
“Well, I shall have to talk to Inspector Park-Coombs, but it is getting too late for that right now. I think it is best if we go home and start afresh in the morning.”
O’Harris didn’t look so sure, however he did not argue. They left the alley and threaded their way back to the main roads. Clara was relieved to get away from the crime scene; the whole neighbourhood had a depressive feel to it that was hard to explain. Whatever was going on in the district, she didn’t think it was anything nice.
Chapter Nine
Clara had two tasks to attend to the next day and was relieved that she had delegated at least one of them to Tommy.
Over the last year, Clara’s private investigation business had expanded enormously, and she had more work on her hands than she was capable of dealing with. Clara never felt like she could turn down a case either; how could you decide if one person’s conundrum was worthy of more attention than another’s? The solution was to employ an able assistant and her brother Tommy, who was at something of a loose end after recovering from his war injuries, had been up for the task.
Tommy had never pursued his childhood plans of becoming an architect (he wanted to be a cowboy up until the age of twelve, but architecture held more promise), as the war had interrupted his studies and he had not been able to return to them afterwards. With his health restored, he needed something to do, a purpose in life that would, preferably, also increase the household income. It had taken Clara a long while to contemplate offering him a position within her business – after all, she was the business, and it seemed odd to have someone else helping with her work. But it made sense; it enabled Clara to keep up with all the work on her plate, while also offering Tommy something to do. They had talked about Tommy becoming a partner in the business, but Clara was not quite ready for such a leap.
She had taken so long building up her reputation and proving that a woman could run a business as well as any man, that it seemed a betrayal of herself to suddenly take on a male partner. Fortunately, Tommy did not take offence at being made her assistant, he just enjoyed having something to do.
Clara gave Tommy the task of finding Professor Lynch’s old doctor and learning all he could about the astronomer’s final illness, then she set off to speak to Inspector Park-Coombs.
The inspector and Clara had a strong working relationship; she avoided stepping on his toes and he avoided insulting her capabilities as a private detective. They helped each other and, as a result, Park-Coombs’ success rate for solving crimes had risen above the national average and had impressed his superiors. Even so, whenever he saw Clara walk into the police station, his heart would sink a fraction. He knew the appearance of Clara meant there was trouble somewhere, and he was about to be dragged into it.
On this particular occasion, he had been expecting Clara to drop by the second she realised who the man found stabbed in the alley was. Park-Coombs had no doubt that as soon as he had finished speaking to Captain O’Harris and had appraised him of the situation, then the former RFC pilot could be seeking out Clara to resolve the matter for him. He even left instructions with the desk sergeant to have Clara shown to his office as soon as she arrived. Park-Coombs knew that Clara would not rest until she had spoken with him and it would be simplest to get everything over and done with.
Clara, in turn, knew she would be anticipated and was not surprised when the desk sergeant smiled as she entered the police station and pointed straight to the stairs.
“Go up, he is expecting you,” he said.
Clara glanced at the staircase, then gave the sergeant a nod and headed up. She knew exactly where Park-Coombs’ office was and was soon knocking on his door.
“Come in.”
Clara entered and Park-Coombs lifted his head from the paperwork he was sorting through to acknowledge her.
“I was expecting you sooner,” he said.
“I was on another case,” Clara explained. “By the time I learned of what was going on, it was too late to come and see you.”
Clara wandered into the office and took a seat opposite Park-Coombs without being asked.
“This is a messy one.”
“Not least because of your friend O’Harris being involved,” Park-Coombs nodded. “I didn’t like to say to him, but he opened himself up for this potential disappointment when he started that Home.”
“Are you suggesting you thought something like this would happen?” Clara said in astonishment.
“I didn’t think it would be so dramatic,” Park-Coombs explained. “I just had this feeling he was asking for trouble when he opened a place for men with troubled minds. It’s really an asylum, isn’t it?”
“It is far more complicated a situation than such a label will give credit to. In any case, I do not believe that O’Harris’ guests are murderers.”
“How do you explain Private Peterson?” Park-Coombs said, with obvious glee at finding a flaw in her conviction. “The evidence is pretty clear.”
“Really Inspector? What evidence is that?” Clara asked.
Park-Coombs’ satisfaction diminished as he realised Clara was about to counter every point he made in favour of Peterson being the suspect.
“The knife in his back,” Park-Coombs began, but then instantly regretted speaking the words.
“And yet, Peterson did not own a knife,” Clara observed. “And he was stabbed in the back, a task virtually impossible to do yourself.”
“We have a theory for that too,” Park-Coombs said quickly.
“That the woman was carrying the knife and stabbed him?” Clara suggested. “Do you have proof the knife belonged to her?”
Park-Coombs hesitated, w
hich was all it took for Clara to pounce.
“If we cannot connect the knife to either of the victims, then we must ask where it came from.”
“Peterson’s memory loss is all too convenient,” Park-Coombs quickly pointed out.
“Personally, I would call it inconvenient,” Clara replied. “By failing to remember anything, Peterson puts himself in a position of appearing guilty and hiding something, while also being unable to defend himself by stating what really happened.”
“But Peterson has these hallucinations, he confessed to them. He was distraught when I questioned him and said when he has these moments, he doesn’t know what he is doing. I’m not saying the man is a natural killer, but when he is hallucinating he is back at the Front, anything could happen. Maybe he thought the woman was an enemy soldier? Maybe he thought she was attacking him and he was defending his trench, doing his duty?” Park-Coombs raised the issue that was going to be the real sticking point in this case. If they could not find out what happened, then everyone was going to say that it was a very sad instance of a mentally ill man going crazy. It would save Peterson from the noose, but he would spend the rest of his life in a lunatic asylum, and it would be the end of O’Harris’ Home.
“O’Harris has a team of expert doctors looking after these men, and they are all in agreement that Peterson is not dangerous. He has never shown signs of violence during one of these episodes,” Clara felt the argument was weak, but she had to state it. How many people would say the same about someone they knew who suddenly killed another person? It was a stock response which would hold no water in a court of law.
The inspector’s face told her he was unimpressed by the statement.
“Things change, people change. Maybe, in the past, people have always been careful around him during these episodes, so he did not feel the need to react violently. Maybe this woman, in fear of her life, pushed him away or shouted at him, and that tipped Peterson over the edge?”
Clara was silent, because that was a possibility none of them could deny.
“But, if she had this knife, why didn’t she use it first?” Clara asked the question that was bothering her. “Imagine, Inspector, I am that woman and you are Peterson. He is coming down the alley, acting oddly because he is hallucinating, though I must stress neither we or Peterson know that he was hallucinating, he may have just been having a panic attack. Come on, get up.”
Park-Coombs gave a long sigh, then rose and came around his desk to face Clara.
“Now, I have a knife,” Clara picked up a pencil from the desk to represent a knife, she held it out before her. “Assuming I am scared of you, as you approach I’ll thrust the knife at you to keep you away.”
“Which could be when Peterson grabbed hold of it,” Park-Coombs reached out and grabbed the pencil. “Then he struck out at the victim.”
He thrust the pencil at Clara’s stomach.
“Now, the blade went in with some force and lodged, so Peterson lets it go,” Park-Coombs gave the pencil back to Clara. “He now turns away, the woman wrenches the knife from her belly with her last strength and stabs him in the back.”
Clara obeyed his scenario and prodded the pencil into the Inspector’s spine.
“You see the problem with that, don’t you?” She asked him.
Park-Coombs turned back around and raised an eyebrow.
“If the knife went in so deep that Peterson could not pull it straight back out, then what are the chances that a dying woman, bleeding heavily and in terrible pain, could?” Clara said.
“People have these sudden spurts of strength,” Park-Coombs said dismissively.
“To wrench a knife from yourself and thrust it hard enough at a man, who is already walking away from you, that it lodges deep in his back?” Clara was unconvinced. “That requires a lot of effort from a person who was clearly not in a position to do something so energetic.”
“I imagine you have another theory,” Park-Coombs folded his arms across his chest and waited to be impressed by Clara’s take on the case.
“Honestly, Inspector, I don’t have anything other than speculation. My instinct says there were other people in that alley and that Peterson stumbled upon something he shouldn’t have. Did you not notice how reluctant people were to talk in that area?”
“I find in places like that its normal for people to not want to talk to the police,” Park-Coombs huffed.
“But it was more than that. The alleys were deserted, how many alleys behind yards in neighbourhoods like that do you know which are not actively used? Where were the people going about their everyday lives? Where were the children playing? Why did no one find that woman’s body until so long after Peterson had been found and taken to hospital? Do you see what I mean? These alleys are like main roads, if something happens, someone sees it or comes across it pretty quickly.”
Park-Coombs mellowed.
“I do know what you mean,” he said. “I grew up in a similar area, not quite so poor, but with lots of houses together and an alley running behind the yards. There was always someone in that alley, day and night. I used to lay in bed and hear old man Frazer crashing about in the alley, dead drunk and singing to himself. His wife wouldn’t let him in the house when he had had a drink, so he would sleep in the alley and be stumbled over by the dustmen or the coal man.”
“Exactly, Inspector, life spills over into those alleyways. People acquire it as a means of expanding their own meagre living space, especially when they only have a room or two to call their own. But those alleys last night were so barren, so empty, it was unsettling.”
Park-Coombs thought about this for a while.
“Did you notice how there was nothing stacked in them, either? Aside from the bins we found the woman behind, there was nothing in that alley. No stacks of wood, no broken furniture, no dumped rubbish or broken glass.”
“No old drunks littering the ground,” Clara added.
Park-Coombs smiled.
“That too,” he nodded. “It was almost as if it had been cleared for a purpose. How odd.”
“I noticed that people seemed scared,” Clara said. “They seemed fearful. Even the man who found Peterson and was prepared to speak to me, was very reluctant to say much. And his mother made some odd remarks about not getting involved in other people’s problems. Have you had any reports of trouble in that area?”
“Not for a few years now,” Park-Coombs rubbed his moustache. “Used to be a time that place was the resort of thieves and pimps. Wouldn’t be many weeks we were not out there having to sort some trouble. Now you mention it, it has quietened down considerably. Hadn’t given it a thought before, we are so busy and it is a relief to not have to worry about a place.”
“It is almost as if someone has cleared out the area of troublemakers and scared the locals into being more law-abiding.”
“Which raises that awkward question of – why?” Park-Coombs was becoming intrigued, Clara could see he was at last coming around to the idea that something more was going on than first met the eye.
“Whatever is going on in that neighbourhood, we need to delve into it. It may be the only way to save Peterson,” she said.
Park-Coombs held up a hand to pause her.
“I am not ruling Peterson out as a suspect any time soon. There might be something going on in that place, but that does not mean your friend could not have lost his head and stabbed a woman. We have already discussed how it might have happened.”
“And how difficult that would have been,” Clara pointed out.
Park-Coombs was not defeated.
“We both know that weirder things have happened. I’ve seen a dying man running away from a crime scene on a broken leg. In those heat of the moment situations, people can do the unexpected.”
“Then I shall just have to prove you wrong,” Clara replied. “And that means knowing more about what happened that night. There is the woman, of course, who was she? And I would like to see the knife for myself.”
“Then we should go to the morgue and chat with Dr Deáth,” Park-Coombs walked to a coat stand by the wall and collected his jacket. “He should have some information for us by now.”
The Inspector held his office door open for Clara and they headed off to find the coroner.
Chapter Ten
Tommy had been left in charge of locating Professor Lynch’s old doctor. There was no knowing if the man was still alive after all these years, but if he was, he might be able to provide insight into the last days of Lynch, the astronomer turned astrologer. Clara had taken a note of the doctor’s name on the prescription she had found in Lynch’s papers, and Tommy had compared this to a street directory he had found in what had once been his father’s library. Tommy and Clara still lived in the house they had grown up in. Their parents had been killed during the war; a terrible misfortune while they were visiting London and a German Zeppelin came over and dropped bombs.
At the time Tommy had been serving with the army at the Front. Clara had suddenly found herself alone. She had coped by volunteering as a nurse and playing her part, and then Tommy had come home severely injured and Annie had joined them as a housekeeper and to help with Tommy, and life had changed yet again.
There were still echoes of their parents about the house, however. Including the library, which was on the top floor of the property and dominated the length of the attic. This had been the domain of their father, who used it as an office, a reading room and a retreat from the everyday world. Tommy and Clara rarely went up there these days, except to fetch a book. It felt like they were trespassing on their father’s private space when they entered the attic, even though he had been gone so many years. You could still smell the smoke of his pipe in the rooms.
Tommy had slipped in, found a directory from 1909 and opened it on the table in the library, only to start to feel uneasy – as if he was being watched. He kept looking over his shoulder at the battered, red leather armchair his father had refused to let go, and which had sat in his library ever since. Tommy was a little bit superstitious, he was prepared to admit that to himself, and after trying to overcome the sense of someone else being in the room with him for several minutes, he had to give up and head downstairs with the directory.