by Emma Jameson
“What fell? The ceiling fixture?”
“No. This.” Removing a chrome Ronson cigarette lighter from his inner jacket pocket, he held it up for Lady Juliet to see. “I don’t suppose you recognize it?”
She glanced over, checked the road, and glanced again, longer the second time. “No. I like the design. Is that a raven?”
“A magpie, I think. The raised metal in the middle is meant to be its white breast.” He hesitated, then added, “I believe Lucy saw the man who ran me down and killed Penny. I think she brought me this to help me find him.”
* * *
After a long drive, and an equally long discussion of the supernatural, arriving in the port city of Plymouth came as a relief to Ben. Here the natural beauty of Devon seemed to disappear, at least after his weeks in Cornwall, giving way to progress pursued with a fervency perhaps not even London could match. The streets were wide, and many looked new. The storefronts lined up smartly like soldiers, each with a picture window and striped awning; cars and trams clogged Union Street while above, billboards sold everything from porridge to Cartier diamonds. Ben was tempted to seek out a few points of interest, like the Royal Citadel, but he resisted. He and Lady Juliet were bound for the warehouse headquarters, Singer’s Fine Rugs and Furnishings, to speak to the man who occasionally employed Bobby Archer.
Winston Singer invited them into his office, which surprised Ben; he’d imagined amateur detectives would be viewed with suspicion, even hostility, but Mr. Singer seemed sympathetic to Ben’s request and willing to help. His answers, however, led nowhere. No, Bobby Archer wasn’t known to drink on the job. No, he’d never crashed or even dinged a lorry. Yes, other drivers in the southeast were employed by Mr. Singer, and yes, a handful had been involved in accidents with civilians since the blackout. But none in Birdswing. Mr. Singer had his secretary pull the company’s accident reports and spread them out for Ben and Lady Juliet to peruse. Sure enough, insurance adjustors verified that all the incidents had occurred in Devon, not Cornwall.
As they left the warehouse, a church tower pealed eleven o’clock, and Lady Juliet turned to Ben. “My friend Margaret’s party doesn’t start until half past twelve, and she’s warned me repeatedly about turning up on time. It seems that with regard to frivolous social intercourse, punctuality is a sin on par with debating religion or refusing to bathe. So between now and one o’clock, would you care to make a circuit of every garage in Plymouth, hoping to chance upon a mechanic who repaired a lorry with a dented bonnet?”
Ben made a pained noise.
“I quite agree. So I took the liberty of unearthing the address of Mrs. Norma Archer. Bobby lives with her on the east side. Mind you, at this time of day, most men would be at work. But since we’ll arrive at Mrs. Archer’s well before the pubs open….” Before she finished, he was already nodding.
Norma Archer lived in a third floor bedsit on Rosebury Road. The building’s red brick front was pleasant enough, but stairs were uncarpeted and smelled faintly of urine. Her door, 304, had peeling paint, a brass 3, a brass 4, and a dark spot where the 0 once hung.
“No, thank you!” a woman called in response to Ben’s knock.
“Mrs. Archer?” He felt absurd, introducing himself through the unopened door. “My name is Ben Bones. We haven’t been introduced, but I’d like to speak to you, just briefly, about—”
“No, thank you! We don’t need any!” the woman called, louder.
“Mrs. Archer, this is Lady Juliet Linton. I’ve traveled all the way from Birdswing to speak to your nephew, and I insist you open this door.”
A muttered conference inside the bedsit followed. One voice was clearly male, though the words were too low to make out. Then a key scraped in the lock, and Bobby Archer opened the door. He looked very much as his estranged wife described, handsome despite his stubbly cheeks, stained shirt, and uncombed black hair. The heroic chin, sensuous lips, fine eyes, and noble brow made him look like a Hollywood actor miscast as a bum. Then he spoke.
“I don’t owe you nothing.” He pronounced that last “nuffink.” “Never seen you in me life.”
“This isn’t about money. As I said, I’m Ben Bones. Penny’s husband.”
Bobby’s eyes widened as he took Ben in a second time. “What you come here for?”
“Just to talk. May we come in?”
“There’s no—” Even as Bobby started to shut the door in their faces, Lady Juliet lifted her skirt hem a fraction, planting one large booted foot over the threshold. That, coupled with her glare, seemed to change Bobby’s mind.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Bobby sighed, stepping aside to let them in. “I’ll give you ten minutes, then I got someplace to be.”
The bedsit, meant to accommodate at most two people, seemed filled with the detritus of a dozen. The walls were invisible, covered with postcards, torn pages from magazines, photographs, framed bits of embroidery and oil paintings, the sort that crop up in church jumbles and never get sold. Most of the floor was also obscured, sometimes by tall stacks of possessions—books, hat boxes, cigar boxes, tins—and sometimes by untidy piles that looked like junk to Ben: yellowed newspapers, torn wrapping paper, unopened letters. In the center of this chaos sat a wingback chair draped in mismatched knitted blankets, and in the chair sat an old woman, knitting. Ben saw at once why she might have been reluctant to get up and answer his knock: besides all the disarray, there was only a narrow path from her chair to the door.
“I’d ask you to sit, but that’s Bobby’s.” She nodded at a nearby sofa. Apart from the knitted blankets of many colors that covered it, the sofa was the only spot not being used for storage, as near as Ben could tell. Bobby Archer fell upon it, not sitting but stretching out lengthwise.
“Me bed! Auntie can’t pile her rubbish here, or it goes in the bin. That’s the rule,” Bobby announced.
“Not rubbish,” Mrs. Archer said mildly. Her hands worked with slow precision as she studied Ben and Lady Juliet. “You’re not as handsome as our Bobby. You rich? I always said Penny would marry up.”
“I’m not rich. I’m a doctor,” Ben said. “I won’t take any more of your valuable time than strictly necessary. Let me start by saying I’m not here to judge anyone or cause distress. But I have questions about the manner of my wife’s death and—”
“My time’s not valuable,” Mrs. Archer said, hands working with a swift precision at odds with her unhurried speech. Her eyes shifted to Juliet. “You live at that manor in Birdswing?”
“I do.”
“You said Linton. Thought you were married.”
“I was.” Lady Juliet’s tone was frosty.
“Her husband left the village in the dead o’ night, like me.” Bobby grinned. “Hell hath no fury. My boys told me he were locked out of Belsham Manor stark naked. Before he could hitch a ride out, he wrote a farmer a promissory note for a pair o’ trousers.”
“Yes, well, no doubt that gullible soul yet awaits repayment,” Lady Juliet said. “Mr. Archer, you mentioned an appointment to keep, and as the pubs will soon open, I’ll take you at your word. We have reason to believe your, shall we say, old friend Penny Eubanks Bones retained one of your possessions as a keepsake. We’d like to restore it to you, if it is indeed yours.”
Impressed with how easily she’d brought them to the point, Ben reached into his pocket to produce the lighter, but Lady Juliet put a hand on his arm. “Not just yet. Mr. Archer, the item is a chrome Ronson with a design on the case. Tell us the design, and we’ll know it’s yours.”
Apparently a bedsit stuffed with odds and ends wasn’t enough for Bobby Archer; from the look of low cunning that narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips, he wanted that lighter, too. Perhaps he assumed he could sell it or swap it for a pint.
“The Union Jack!” he burst out, like a child guessing at a riddle.
“No. Think carefully, Mr. Archer,” Lady Juliet said. “Have any other lighters with embossed designs gone missing?”
H
e pondered the question, gears transparently grinding behind those fine eyes, then shrugged and gave up. “No. Carry matches, I do. But I’d like it all the same, if it were Penny’s. Your, er, Ladyship.”
“Why is that?” Lady Juliet asked.
“Because it were hers,” Mrs. Archer said.
Bobby didn’t deny it. Instead he looked Ben up and down again, as if whatever he saw, he found wanting. “I rang her up sometimes. Even wrote her a letter,” he added, chest swelling. “She wrote me back. It was special between us.”
“Forgive me, Mr. Archer, if we view that claim with dubious eyes,” Lady Juliet said. “We cannot surrender an item that might ultimately convict Penny’s killer, as her death appears to be murder.”
Ben wasn’t sure that making such announcement was wise, much less warranted, but the suggestion of murder, delivered in ringing tones that would have done the Royal Shakespeare Company proud, electrified Mrs. Archer and her nephew. His face registered naked shock. She dropped her knitting on her lap.
“You think our Bobby done it? You accusing our Bobby?”
“Not at all,” Ben said hastily. “We apologize for taking up your—”
“Are you ratting him out?” Lady Juliet snapped back. “Did your nephew’s unrequited amour for Penny lead him to—”
“We’re leaving.” Taking Lady Juliet by the arm, Ben started toward the door, or tried to. The maneuver wasn’t actually possible for a man dependent on a cane, at least not with that particular lady. Fortunately for him, she must have seen sense, because with a huff of frustration, she allowed herself to be led out.
“Penny never loved you, you know,” Bobby shouted at their backs.
“I know,” Ben said.
“Then why you doing it? Looking for her killer?”
Ben had no answer, so he shut the door.
* * *
“I really think you should have allowed me to continue my interrogation,” Lady Juliet said as she guided the Crossley through mid-afternoon traffic on the way to Margaret Freeman’s house.
“‘Are you ratting him out?’” Ben repeated and laughed.
“Yes, well, if you were a student of what’s known as hard-boiled detective novels, you’d realize it’s advantageous to speak to the criminal class in their own misbegotten tongue. How do you like Mr. Archer for our killer?”
“Not much. He seems fixated on Penny, that’s true. And she got a letter just before we left for Birdswing, a letter than seemed to upset her. But she told me it was about local news. And she said she wrote back but only to say when we’d arrive and what sort of car I owned, so we’d be expected.”
“So. Penny sent a letter telling someone, possibly Bobby Archer, you’d be traveling along Stafford Road in an Austin Ten-Four sometime around dusk. Important information for anyone bent on deliberately running you down.”
“It was pitch dark when I parked on the verge. Well, almost, but not quite. I suppose someone with good eyes or a pair of binoculars could have seen us approach in the twilight.” Ben shook his head. “I’m still thinking about what Bobby said.”
Lady Juliet shot him a quizzical glance.
“He asked me why I’m doing this. Trying to discover if Penny was murdered, and why. I know she had plenty of enemies, and it seems like she deserved them, frankly. To say I’m burning up with the desire for justice on her behalf….” He stopped.
“If I were you, I’d be positively ablaze with the desire for justice for myself,” Lady Juliet said. “You were nearly killed and put through untold agony. The man who did it must be punished, even if the deed, according to that note, was accidental.”
“Punishing the man who did it won’t change what happened. I’m not even sure it would give me satisfaction at this point,” Ben said truthfully. “When I was stuck in the Sheared Sheep—yes. A little righteous vengeance would have suited me fine. Now….” He shrugged. “Life goes on. If I could have one wish granted, it would be for my left knee to bend properly.”
“Perhaps it shall, given enough time and exercise.” Lady Juliet smiled. “But you do want this mystery solved, I feel certain of it. And Lucy does, too, or she wouldn’t have revealed herself by providing a clue. Perhaps you just can’t resist a puzzle.”
Ben considered that. Physicians were sleuths by nature, listening to seemingly mysterious complaints for the clue that would lead to resolution. And maybe there was a kernel of stubbornness in him, a refusal to give up on something once he’d engaged. During his internship, Ben’s very first case had been an old man dying of cancer. All efforts at treatment had failed; what remained was palliative care, which presumably not even a wet-behind-the-ears intern could botch. He’d known that, known that untested young doctors were always given terminal cases in the beginning, partly to reduce the chance of fatal errors, partly to teach a lesson: many patients die, and the doctor who cannot accept that reality cannot practice. And still, he’d researched novel approaches to advanced tumors, he’d harassed pharmacists about unproven drugs, he’d spent hours at the old man’s bedside trying to will him back to health. In the end, the patient died, of course, and a bemused nurse had asked Ben why he’d fought a battle which personally gained him nothing and did the mostly insensible patient no good, either.
“Because I can’t not try,” was all he’d been able to say. Perhaps the same was true of tracking down Penny’s killer. Getting on with his own life was probably the best course, yet when it came down to it, he couldn’t help but try.
They reached the Freeman residence at a quarter past one. Margaret and Gerald lived in a detached townhouse with a stone exterior, peaked roof, and French white viburnums around the front gate. The sort of residence Penny had aspired to, outside and in—black and white tiled floors, soaring ceilings, crystal chandeliers, and a baby grand piano. A paid entertainer in evening dress tinkled the ivories, crooning a love song as uniformed maids served drinks. Most of the guests were older men in business attire, though a few wives were present, all of them in silk dresses, fur stoles, and high heels. As Ben and Lady Juliet entered, every female pair of eyes came to rest on that tartan skirt and well-worn boots.
“Ju! And Dr. Bones! How marvelous!” Margaret sailed forth to greet them. Her cream-colored gown, as well as that flame-red hair, made her a standout in a sea of black, gray, and navy. “I’d practically given up hope.” More softly, she said to Lady Juliet, “Somewhere in Birdswing, a dog bed cries out for its missing upholstery. Have you been at the needle and thread again?”
Lady Juliet tossed her head. “It was this or trousers, Margaret dear.”
“Then I applaud your sense of decorum. Gerald, leave off that for a moment! Come meet Dr. Bones.”
Excusing himself from a crowd of men deep in conversation near the hearth, Gerald Freeman genially presented himself for inspection. “I never disobey my wife,” he told Ben. “Crossing a redhead is tantamount to a death wish. Once she was so angry, I fled to the docks and smuggled myself across the Channel for a month.”
“Ah, but he came back. He’s no fool,” Margaret said, gazing fondly up at her husband.
“No, indeed. Dr. Bones, have you given any thought to Mussolini? What’s your take on Il Duce?”
“Oh, dear, you know where that discussion leads. Into your breast pocket and that bottle of nitroglycerin.” Margaret patted her husband’s arm. “Dr. Bones, the glass of whiskey in my husband’s hand is his second. What’s your professional opinion on hard liquor for a man with angina pectoris?”
Ben expected Gerald to look defensive, but instead he appeared interested. “Oh. Well. I’d prescribe moderation in all things. Avoid too much exertion, too much alcohol, and overly emotional debates.”
“I shall do my best to obey,” Gerald said, and Margaret chuckled as her husband rejoined his friends.
“My poor Gerald is such a hypochondriac. He’s obsessed with his health and devours every newspaper article on modern medicine. He has only a touch of angina, but let him suffer the least s
tab of pain, and he pours those tablets down the gullet like candy. Well. Ju, Dr. Bones, it’s wonderful to see you both. But I’d better make the circuit again,” she said, and glided off to greet another pair of newcomers.
Ben did his best to mingle, but the Freemans’ affair was more like a stiff compulsory hospital affair than the sort of cocktail party Penny used to throw. The men talked nothing but politics, mostly with regard to how their bottom lines were affected. Clearly they were Gerald’s industrial contacts: shipbuilders, chemical manufacturers, retired or failed politicians. Ben, who preferred to keep things light when conversing with absolute strangers, was reduced to frequent nods and noncommittal smiles. Before long, no one had anything to say to him, and his host was segregated by another low-voiced knot of businessmen, while Lady Juliet had disappeared altogether.
“Excuse me.” He caught a maid’s attention. “Is there a library?”
“Mr. Freeman has a study. Just there.” She pointed down the hall. “Last door on the right.”
The study turned out to be an oak-paneled room dominated by a large, leather-topped desk. One wall was filled with books, the other with framed portraits of Gerald. In pride of place was a photograph of him standing beside a straight-backed, somber man with a dark mustache. He looked vaguely familiar, perhaps from London society, or possibly from Parliament’s House of Lords.
No wonder I don’t fit in with these people. They’re probably social climbers. Wonder what she sees in them? His gaze fell on Lady Juliet, curled up on a pouf reading Jane Eyre.
“Oh! Have I been gone so very long?” she asked, guiltily closing the book. “I told myself I’d only slip off for a moment, and then, well. Charlotte Brontë. I realize Emily is all the rage, and Wuthering Heights is ostensibly oh-so-romantic, but Heathcliff needed psychoanalysis. Give me Mr. Rochester any day.”
“He did keep his wife in the attic.”
“True. Probably it’s Jane I prefer.” Standing up, she slipped the book back in its place on the shelf. “This is Gerald’s domain, of course. Margaret says it’s the place where conversations and Cuban cigars go to die. I get the impression you’re not enjoying the party, either.”