Wouldn't It Be Deadly

by D. E. Ireland

  Flowery nonsense, but Eliza loved every word. “What would I do without you, Freddy?”

  In another second, they might have scandalized the traffic rounding Belgrave Square Gardens with an ardent kiss. A rude voice stopped them. “’Ey there, Miss Doolittle, ’old yer tracks. We got to be talking afore I soak that bloke in the river!”

  A barrel-chested older man made his way toward them. Eliza recognized Dmitri Kollas, one of Nepommuck’s pupils. Higgins suspected the Greek diplomat was actually from Clerkenwell. Although Kollas pretended not to speak English, she’d heard him arguing loudly with Nepommuck several times. What little she heard through the walls revealed that Kollas spoke like a Cockney native.

  “Mr. Kollas, what’s wrong?”

  His face turned purple. “That bastard Nepo you work for. I been there twice this mornin’ banging on ’is door, but ’e ain’t got the knockers to open. Yellow as pus, ’e is. And after all ’is bloody nattering at me these months, about ’ow I be lower than a snake’s belly. Well, I be putting a call to me mates in Clerkenwell what will pay ’im back for all ’is insults!”

  “Perhaps the Maestro simply isn’t at home,” she said.

  “Nah, I ’eard him moving around in there,” Kollas said in disgust. “’E even told me to clear off through the bloody door. The bloke’s a right dodger what ain’t got the bullocks to admit ’e’s bleeding worse than us fools what pay ’im.”

  “But why are you so angry? You’ve been his pupil for months.”

  “Played me, ’e did. Or maybe ’e thinks I can’t read? Thinks maybe there ain’t no one in the bleeding town that don’t know ’ow to put words together! Well, Nepo best jimmy up some of my ’ard-earned sterling. I ain’t been forking over so’s I can get knocked down for being Cockney and not bloody Greek!”

  “Do you understand this fellow?” Freddy whispered.

  Eliza ignored him. “What is there to read?”

  He held aloft a newspaper and struck the folded page. “You the only schooled filly not reading the dailies? Look on this, and tell me all us dusters ain’t got cause to set his place afire.”

  Kollas thrust the paper into Eliza’s hands before stalking off. She scanned the front page. Clara and Freddy gathered around her. “What was he saying, Eliza?” Clara asked. “I couldn’t understand a word.”

  “Dmitri Kollas is one of the Maestro’s students. Apparently he went to his lodgings twice this morning, but Nepommuck refused to open the door. For some reason the Maestro doesn’t want to see him.” Eliza stopped. “Oh, crikey.”

  “What is it?” Freddy peered over her shoulder.

  “This article says Emil Nepommuck committed several crimes in his native Hungary, including rape, assault, arson, and fraud.” She read for a moment. “And he served time in a Budapest prison.”

  Clara let out a cry. “It can’t be true! Where is the paper getting such lies?”

  But Eliza had no time to answer. She stepped out to the curb, her hand raised. A hansom cab immediately steered in her direction. “How did you do that?” Freddy asked in amazement.

  “We must get to Nepommuck’s lodgings before he runs off. A mob of people will be arriving at Belgrave Square any minute. And they’ll all be wanting the truth.” Eliza stared down at the newspaper article before getting into the cab. “I don’t much care about the truth, but he owes me two weeks’ salary.”

  When the cab reached their stop, Eliza jumped to the pavement before the horse halted.

  “Eliza, wait for us!” Freddy and Clara called after her.

  She ran into the building, then took the stairs two at a time. Breathless, she stopped at the top. The hallway was totally dark.

  Freddy and Clara bumped into her, almost knocking her down. “What’s going on?” Clara asked. “Why is it so dark?”

  “Someone turned off the lights,” Eliza said in a grim voice. “Again.”

  “We ought to find someone to turn the lights back on,” Freddy suggested.

  “No, I’ll turn them on. The switch is halfway down the hall on the left.” After the last incident, Eliza had made certain to locate it. “Enough of these games.”

  “Who’s playing games?” Freddy asked as he and Clara followed close behind Eliza in the dark.

  “Someone is trying to scare me. It worked once, but not this time.” Eliza brushed her hand along the wall to the switch. With one click, brightness washed over them.

  “There, that wasn’t so hard.” She turned to speak to Freddy but his sister let out a horrendous scream. He gasped beside her.

  Eliza spun around to see what they were staring at in such horror.

  Nepommuck lay facedown outside his apartment door, head turned to the side. Eliza could see that his eyes were motionless and wide open. She fell back against the wall.

  With a strangled cry, Clara pointed at the dagger plunged into his back. Freddy grabbed his sister, who buried her face against his chest. “Eliza, we must get out of here. Now!”

  But Eliza saw something else besides the dagger. Trembling, she forced herself to walk closer to the dead man. Blood streamed from his wound, staining his brocaded dressing gown and the carpet beneath him. She bent closer to the lifeless body. It was more gruesome than she feared. Plunged into his open mouth was one of Eliza’s shiny new tuning forks.

  FIVE

  Any day spent in Scotland Yard was a fearsome day indeed. Eliza could barely control her mounting fear. After examining the Maestro’s body and the hallway, the police brought her to the Yard for questioning. Shaken from the sight of the murdered Nepommuck, she expected the police to ask a few questions and then send her home. Instead they left her alone for hours in a small windowless room as cold as the North Sea. Eliza had nothing to do but worry and stare at the peeling paint on the walls.

  She huddled on a tilted bench that threatened to collapse at any moment. But Eliza refused to move to the two chairs pushed up against a scarred wooden table. No doubt those chairs were reserved for the detectives who would eventually come to interrogate her. Although heaven knew what they expected her to tell them that she hadn’t already said back at Belgrave Place.

  The police had no right to keep her waiting for hours, alone and forgotten. She’d done nothing wrong. Unfortunately growing up in the East End had taught her that the law didn’t give a fig about rights for a person such as her. And if they took it into their heads that she had killed the Maestro, she’d never see the gloomy skies of London again.

  But she wasn’t only worried about herself. Where had they taken Freddy and Clara? Poor Clara had been hysterical when they’d brought them all to the Yard. Freddy’s genteel sister would never stand up to rough treatment by the police. Eliza wasn’t even certain she could.

  If only one of her tuning forks hadn’t been found on Nepommuck’s dead body. It was like an arrow pointed right at her. She hoped the police realized that no murderer would leave such an obvious clue. The tuning fork had probably been left to direct suspicion away from the real murderer, although why that bastard chose to involve her, she’d bloody well like to know.

  She had no motive. Granted, Nepommuck had been a snobbish, irritating fellow, but he’d given her a good job with a salary to match. The police should see instantly that she had no reason to want him dead.

  No, she blamed that explosive article in the newspaper. Someone who read that realized the Maestro was not who he said he was. Certainly that Kollas fellow was enraged about being lied to, given his harsh words earlier that day. And how many other students would also feel cheated or betrayed? But she didn’t understand why that would lead to his murder.

  Eliza rose to her feet and paced the small area between the table and the wall. Did she know the murderer? Was it someone she saw every day? Perhaps a jealous husband. She recalled the spectacle that Mary Finch made of herself at the garden party on Sunday. Had Mary driven her husband not only to distraction, but to murder?

  And what about poor Lady Gresham? At the garden party, s
he seemed as thrilled as a girl of twenty to be announcing her engagement to the Maestro. Tears welled in Eliza’s eyes. How sad that the older woman’s recent joy would now be turning to bitterness and grief. As for herself, Eliza found it hard to believe that she’d never again hear the Hungarian mock her English or watch him comb that ridiculous mustache. She may not have liked him, but over the past two months she’d grown accustomed to his smug little face.

  The door banged open.

  Eliza wiped the tears from her cheeks before turning around. Two men in rumpled suits entered the room. She could see that a bobby stood guard outside the door, helmet in hand. He threw her a stern look before shutting the door once again, leaving her alone with the two men. Terror clenched her gut. What were these gents up to? she wondered. Nothing good, that was for certain.

  “Well, what ’ave we got ’ere, Grint?” the taller one asked. His beady gaze lingered on her bosom.

  “Lemme see.” His red-haired colleague consulted a notebook. “Seems this is Miss Doolittle, a teacher. Only that classroom in Belgrave Square don’t look like any I ever seen before, Hollaway. Ain’t no desks nor chalkboard. Found a bunch of those same metal things what was sticking up in the dead body. Dunno what they are. Fancy kind of weapon, most like.”

  “They’re tuning forks.” Eliza swallowed hard. “I use them as a teaching tool.”

  “Don’t the tart sound fancy, Hollaway.”

  “I’m not a tart!” Eliza felt her anger rise, but she fought to keep it in check. “And you have no right to keep me locked up here.”

  “We got every right seeing as how something what belonged to you was found sticking out of the murder victim.” He moved closer to her, and she took an involuntary step back. “So let’s not be talking about your rights, because you don’t got any.”

  Hollaway laughed. “Ain’t that the truth.”

  “Now sit down and keep quiet.” Grint pointed at the bench.

  Eliza sat down with an audible sigh. She’d suspected as much. Despite her fancy clothes and proper elocution, they’d realized right off she wasn’t a real lady. The swells and toffs ruled the world just as her father always said, and people like her mattered less than week-old bread.

  Well, if worse came to worst, she wasn’t going down without a fight. Eliza nudged her parasol lying beneath the bench with her foot. If either of these two laid a hand on her, she’d try to get in at least one good blow.

  The red-haired detective seemed pleased to have cowed her. Beneath his mass of freckles, a chilling grin creased his face. “Now, I am Detective Colm Grint, and me and my partner, Detective William Hollaway, have been sent to question you. A course the way we see it, it seems pretty obvious what happened at that little love nest of yours on Belgravia Place.”

  “Love nest? That’s ridiculous.”

  Hollaway sat across the table from her. “Don’t seem ridiculous to me. You’re a young unmarried woman living across the hall from a Hungarian gent who had a fancy title and too much money. Pretty cozy setup, if you ask me. Especially as the landlady said he was paying the rent on your rooms.”

  “Of course he paid the rent. I was working as his teaching assistant. And I didn’t live in the rooms, I only gave lessons there.” Eliza stared back at him. “Ask anyone in the building. They will tell you that I left every day promptly at four o’clock.”

  “A lot can happen between a man and a woman, even before four o’clock.” Grint sat next to his partner, stretching out his legs beneath the table.

  Eliza licked her dry, chapped lips. She thought she might indeed be capable of murder for a tall glass of water. “Maestro Nepommuck was my employer. Nothing more.”

  “Oh, he was employing you to do something all right.”

  If she weren’t so exhausted and afraid, she might have found this whole conversation amusing. “I did not kill Maestro Nepommuck. I had no reason to want him dead. He paid me a good salary.”

  Both men looked over at each other as soon as she said that.

  Grint smacked his notepad. “Funny you say that, Doolittle. That Eynsford Hill fellow told us you hadn’t been paid in weeks.”

  Eliza sighed. Trust poor Freddy to remember something like that, when he usually forgot what blooming day it was. “Do you really think I’d kill someone for thirty quid?”

  “People end up in the morgue for a lot less,” Grint said.

  Hollaway snapped his fingers. “You know, I’m thinking it weren’t no love nest. I’m betting this dolly argued with her boss over the money.”

  “I did not! And we didn’t argue at all. I gave my lessons, and he gave his. We barely saw each other. I don’t know who stole one of my tuning forks, but I swear I’m innocent.”

  “Sure, sure. Every bloke in prison says that. Go ahead and tell the Detective Inspector that, too, when he comes. He ain’t gonna believe you, neither.” Hollaway grinned.

  “Then I demand to see the Detective Inspector. Let me tell my story to him.”

  Grint whistled. “The tart is making demands now. Ain’t she a brash piece of work.”

  “I tell you, I’m a respectable lady who earns a respectable living.”

  “Guess it’s more respectable than what you were doing last year when you were selling yourself in Covent Garden.”

  “I sold flowers, and nothing else!”

  Grint looked down at his notepad. “It seems you left your so-called respectable work in Covent Garden, only to take up living with two gents on Wimpole Street.”

  Hollaway cocked an eyebrow at her. “Nice work, Doolittle. Most tarts only land one gent at a time, but you took on two every night.”

  Eliza felt defeated. They were going to twist the truth so it came out ugly no matter how she protested. “Professor Higgins and Colonel Pickering were giving me elocution lessons.”

  “If we had more time, I might give you a lesson or two myself,” Hollaway said with a leer.

  “Be careful, Will. Looks like Miss Doolittle does more with gents than roll in the sheets. Now and again, she decides to stab ’em in the back.” Grint got to his feet.

  When he walked behind her, Eliza froze. Would he beat her? She’d tried so hard to act the part of an upper-middle-class lady, proper in speech and manner, decked out in a beribboned straw hat and an expensive silk peplum jacket. They’d seen through her despite it all.

  “Have you sent for Colonel Pickering and Professor Higgins? Do they even know I’m here? As soon as I was brought in, I asked the sergeant at the desk to call them. And that was hours ago.”

  Grint leaned close to her ear. “And why should either of them care what happens to you, after you left ’em for the Hungarian?”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “I want to see the Detective Inspector. I want someone to send for my friends. And I want to know what happened to Freddy and Clara.”

  “You want a lot of things, it seems,” Grint said in a threatening voice. “Well, here’s what I want to do.” He struck Eliza viciously on the side of her head. Her straw hat went sailing to the floor, ribbons flying.

  Pain and outrage washed over her in equal measure. “How dare you strike me! You have no right!”

  “We have every right to do what we want.” Grint grabbed her arm and twisted her around to face him. “So you’d best do as you’re told, or you’ll find yerself like them suffragettes—behind bars. An’ a bit worse for wear, if you take my meaning.” He gave her a shake for emphasis.

  Her control was just about gone. “So where’s this bloody Detective Inspector then? You can’t shut me up ’ere like a rat in a trap. It ain’t bloody right.”

  “Oh, I knew it, didn’t I, Grint? She don’t sound half the lady she looks.” Hollaway laughed.

  “You got that right, mate.” Grint shoved her to the ground.

  Eliza ducked before her head made contact with the table. Before he could lay his hands on her again, she grabbed her parasol and rolled under the bench.

  “Hey no
w, what are you doing?” Hollaway said as she knocked the bench aside.

  She scrambled to her feet, brandishing her parasol like a sword. “Don’t either of you put your filthy hands on me again, you load of dog bollocks!”

  Grint slowly moved toward her. “’Ere now, dolly, put that down. It’ll go worse for you if you don’t.”

  “Get away or I’ll poke yer bleedin’ eye out, I will!”

  Hollaway feinted to the left and made to grab her parasol. Eliza whacked him in the chest. Grint was too fast, however. Before she could land another blow, he snatched it from her and cracked it over his knees. When he threw the broken parasol aside, Eliza couldn’t help shrieking.

  “Ah-ah-oh-ow-ow-oh-ow! You ruined it. It has a pearl handle, too. I’ll have the law on you!”

  “We are the law, you stupid whore.” Grint reached for her.

  “What the devil! Get away from that woman, Detective, or you’ll be landing in a cell on your arse.” A man dressed in a sharply tailored three-piece suit stood in the open doorway. “What in blazes is going on here?”

  Grint backed off and Hollaway stood at attention. “She was giving us lip, sir.”

  “So you thought you’d break her parasol and scare her silly? Where do you think you are? At a bar brawl in Spitalfields? I should have your badge.”

  “Yes, sir,” Grint muttered, his face nearly as red as his hair.

  Eliza stood stock-still in awe. It couldn’t be. But she’d know that shock of unruly dark hair on any East End street. And a familiar sharp blue eye fixed on her while the other squinted. She breathed hard.

  “Jack, is that you?”

  “Detective Inspector Shaw to you, miss,” Hollaway said, but Jack waved him aside.

  He took a step closer, his mouth falling open in recognition. “Lizzie? The police report said the lady that found the body was a schoolteacher called Elizabeth Doolittle. I didn’t know it was my little Lizzie. But blimey, it is you!” Whooping with laughter, he lifted her off the ground in a bear hug.

  “Jackie, I never thought to see you here,” Eliza said when he finally set her down. “I’d heard you’d joined the coppers, but never suspected you were a detective inspector.” She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “Lord, but your mum must be proud.”