Hopgood opened the door for me, and with uncomfortable familiarity, we settled across the table from each other.
“Now, Ms. Burke—why hadn’t you informed us of the missing paper?”
“Because it hadn’t occurred to me it was missing. I only realized it Sunday.” And then I’d held on to the information for two days. But in my defense, I had been distracted. Still, I was one of those people Detective Constable Pye talked about—someone who withholds information. But not on purpose.
“And,” I added, “I really didn’t know what I could tell you that would help, so I spent yesterday afternoon trying to decipher those phrases. But perhaps now that we have Oona’s notes, we’ll know more.”
Before he could react to my all-inclusive we, a knock came at the door. DC Pye walked in, handed Hopgood a paper—a photocopy of the evidence—and left again.
“Could I have a copy of that, too?” I asked. An eyebrow jumped. “It will help me find the book, I’m sure of it.”
“Do you mean to say you understand what these phrases mean?” Hopgood asked, studying the page. “Looks like a load of nonsense to me. Except for your name here, Ms. Burke”—he tapped on the page—“and this other name. And, of course, the word ‘Death.’”
“Death Bredon. It’s the name of a character in Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers.”
“She named a character Death? A bit obvious, don’t you think?” he asked.
“Lord Peter Wimsey’s middle names.”
“Oh, him,” Hopgood muttered. “The Oxford man who had nothing better to do with his time.” He pushed the paper toward me. “So, Ms. Burke, can you sort this out?”
I studied the page as a whole and then ran my finger over each of its parts. Silly phrases, squiggles, and boxes. And my name.
“Oona texted me just before—well, you know that, you’ve seen her phone. She must’ve had this brainstorm and wrote my name down because she wanted to tell me about it.”
“Who might gain by taking this paper from the hands of a dead woman?”
He’s good, that Sergeant Hopgood—knowing just how to keep a witness on her toes by changing the subject.
“I thought that Bulldog was the most likely, because of his book collecting. It would be quite a prize, a first edition signed by every member of the Detection Club.” I paused and gave Hopgood an encouraging look. Go ahead, tell me his alibi.
“Car-boot sale, Colchester,” he said. “Mr. Moyle was very obliging with the details of his whereabouts, and we’ve followed them up.”
This time, it was Hopgood’s turn to wait. Eventually, when I’d arranged my thoughts, I said, “I suppose you want to know about Clara and Naomi and Zeno.”
“You do seem to be working in close quarters with them, Ms. Burke. Is there anything you know about them that might help the police enquiry?”
“Clara’s a g—” I sighed. “A young woman who is just starting off in the working world. What would she gain by murdering Oona? She’d only be out of a job.”
“But she wasn’t out of a job after Ms. Atherton died,” Hopgood pointed out. “You’ve kept her on.”
“Yes, true.”
“And I understand that she’s living in the flat Ms. Atherton had let for her time in Bath.”
“She seems reluctant to commute from Shepton Mallet, and Oona had signed a lease and paid for the flat through . . . I don’t know. May, I think. But, Sergeant, Clara is small. I can’t see her throwing Oona down the staircase.”
“That staircase is dangerous—wouldn’t take much of a push, especially if Ms. Atherton had been cracked over the head first.”
“Naomi and Zeno each have a history with Oona,” I said, relieved to change the subject and guilty at pointing the finger elsewhere. “Naomi feels slighted, professionally. She wasn’t where she said she was that afternoon.”
“Well done on that account, Ms. Burke—sussing out Ms. Faber’s movements. However”—I hadn’t even had a second to bask in the glow of his compliment—“it would be better for you to come to us and not take it upon yourself to question suspects.”
I assumed a look of being duly chastised. “Yes, sir.”
“Once Ms. Faber amended her statement and we talked to one of the watercolorists, we were able to find her sitting in the café at the bottom of Barlett for that hour.”
“So, she’s accounted for?”
Hopgood’s eyebrows danced a jig. “Is she?”
“She isn’t?” I whispered.
“It takes three minutes to walk from the Charlotte to that café. Piecing together her stated departure time and comparing it with one of the watercolorists as well as her appearance on CCTV along Bartlett Street, we find she had a good ten minutes to spare.”
My heart was in my throat. “Are you going to arrest her?”
“We are going to question her again.”
And again and again, most likely. I calmed down.
“And you’d already confirmed Zeno’s story,” I said.
“Yes, Bristol. Mr. Berryfield traveled by train to and from.”
That took care of my suspect list, and it left me unsatisfied. “And, of course, CCTV doesn’t lie. But twice now—or it might be three times—Zeno has lied to me about something. He said he hadn’t seen Oona in Bath, but he had. He gave me three references, but it turned out they were all the same person. He withheld the fact he and Oona had been married—although, I suppose that doesn’t have anything to do with the job, actually. Still.”
“Are you looking for a reason to remove Mr. Berryfield from his post?” Hopgood asked.
“I don’t think I could lose another exhibition manager—it was one of the restrictions Naomi put on our booking the Charlotte, that we have one. No matter how irritating he can be, I’ve got to stick with him. But I’ve got the measure of him now, and I will force him to toe the line.” How many times had I said that about Roger? “Where did you say he went in Bristol that day?”
“We’ve got it in the notes—I’ll check with Pye. Well, Ms. Burke, and how is your exhibition going?”
Tick, tick, tick.
* * *
* * *
I waited for Clara in the police-station lobby, checking my messages. Val had sent a text to say that although our speaker for the salon may play fast and loose with facts, he would be sure to hold everyone’s attention. And it might be a good idea to keep the sherry decanter away from Maureen Frost for the evening.
“Thank you for waiting,” Clara said when she emerged, “but you don’t have to walk me back.”
“Only to the bridge,” I said. “It’s practically on my way.”
We buttoned up our coats and headed out, making it to the Grand Parade before we spoke again.
“Did everything go all right with DC Pye?” I asked. A gust of wind blew up off the river and sent an icy chill down my neck.
“I suppose. Did they keep the paper?”
“Yes, they are looking at it for fingerprints.”
“They’ll find mine, won’t they?”
I shivered. “And mine. Along with Oona’s, probably. And maybe . . . others.”
“Constable Pye asked me if I could read what Oona had written.”
“You mean there was more than just my name and Death Bredon? Nothing else looked like actual words to me.”
“Oona had her own version of what my nana calls joined-up writing. Next to your name—”
“Hang on.” I stopped just past the steps leading down into the Parade Gardens and pulled out the photocopy that Hopgood had given me. “You mean these squiggles?”
“Yes,” Clara said. “That’s said and it. She wrote: ‘Hayley said it.’”
“Hayley said what?” I asked.
She shrugged.
“Clara, when that paper fell out of your pocket, you thought it
was something else. What?” I asked.
She glanced at me and away and fiddled with the top button on her coat. “Oh, it’s nothing. Only an idea or two. Nothing useful. And now it’s gone.”
“Gone—you’ve lost it? One paper turns up and another goes missing—it’s like we have a poltergeist in our midst.”
We had reached the Pulteney Bridge, and Clara straightened her shoulders. “I won’t go to the literary salon this evening, Hayley. I don’t want to be a distraction.”
“Don’t be daft,” I said. “Of course you should be there. We must carry on with our work, and your presence at the lecture is part of the routine.”
“I didn’t kill her.”
Above the frame of her glasses, her brow furrowed. She’d pressed her lips together, but it didn’t keep her chin from quivering.
“Oh, Clara,” I said, patting her on the arm. “I know you didn’t.”
But somebody did. It’s just that they all had such good alibis.
* * *
* * *
Our literary salon lecturer didn’t actually claim Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins were the same person, and neither did he offer an excuse for such an outrageous assertion. Instead, he compared the authors’ styles and encouraged a discussion. “What if Collins had, in fact, finished The Mystery of Edwin Drood after Dickens died?” he asked. “There is some evidence that . . .” There apparently was no evidence, but the suggestion sparked a lively debate.
I had kept a worried eye on Clara throughout the evening—she appeared listless and distracted—and when Adele said she was giving Audrey and Sylvia Moon a lift home, I asked if she would also take Clara.
“That’s kind of you, Ms. Babbage,” Clara said as they wrapped up and left.
Adele turned to me and asked, “Is she all right?”
“Just tired, I think.”
Zeno pulled on his sheepskin coat and immediately became three times larger than normal. He glanced out the front door at Adele and her group departing.
“Everything all right with Ms. Powell?” he asked. “She did seem a bit preoccupied this evening. Nothing bothering her or you about the . . . enquiry?”
“The enquiry is a police matter,” I said. “And I must say, they seem to be moving at a rapid pace.” Yes, it was a lie, but I wasn’t about to tell him what we’d really been up to during the day—that Clara had been caught with an incriminating piece of evidence in her pocket. “Clara is working on a fabulous idea for the exhibition.”
“Is she now? Splendid.”
Zeno left, and he was replaced by Stuart Moyle.
“Tell me, Bulldog,” I said. “If you had that signed first edition of Murder Must Advertise, what would you do with it?”
“Well, I wouldn’t lose it.”
“It isn’t lost,” I replied crossly.
“Is that why she was murdered—for that book?”
“The police do not share details of their enquiry with me, but I believe they are . . . closing in on the truth.”
My head hurt from putting up a positive—and entirely false—front.
* * *
* * *
Of course, Southend-on-Sea is the longest pier in Britain,” I said, “but we wouldn’t have to go all the way to Essex just to walk on a pier.”
Val and I were tucked up in bed, my head resting on his chest and his arms wrapped round me.
“Wouldn’t you like to see Clacton again?”
Clacton-on-Sea had been our holiday spot when I was young—Mum, Dad, and I would travel east straight across England from Hereford to Essex. Those happy times had molded my lifelong love of the seaside.
“I might be disappointed,” I said. “After all, I was twelve last time I saw it.”
He pulled the duvet up to our chins and kissed my temple.
“How about we go clockwise around England starting at Woolacombe. Or if you like, we could begin at Margate.”
I looked at him. Val had grown up in Margate on the southeast coast—I took this as his offer to share with me his childhood. I accepted.
“You can show me the shell grotto,” I said. “And we can take the cliff walk from Margate to Broadstairs. But I suppose we’ll have to hold off until after the exhibition. May—at least it’ll be warmer.”
“In theory.”
We were quiet. Sleep seemed a long way off, and I considered getting out of bed to make a cup of tea, but out there, beyond the duvet, it was cold, and in here, it wasn’t.
“You’re all right with Clara staying on?” Val asked.
“Who put that paper in her coat pocket?” I asked in response.
“You don’t think it’s obvious that she did it herself?”
I frowned. Was I so gullible that any twenty-something young woman could trigger sympathy in me instead of suspicion?
“I believe she was truly surprised to see what the paper really was. She thought it was notes she’d made—ideas for the exhibition, I think—and she was distressed at what it turned out to be.” I pressed my hand to my forehead. “But maybe what she was distressed about was being discovered.”
Val took my hand and kissed it. “If not Clara, who else had the opportunity?”
Sergeant Hopgood had presented me with that question as I’d left him.
“The people already inside the Charlotte are the most likely,” I said. “We keep the street door on Circus Place locked now, and so anyone coming in the front entrance would be spotted on CCTV. Zeno, Naomi, the Druid. But Clara had been out this morning. She’d gone down to George Street to make photocopies. Of course, the way she’s been forgetting to report her movements, she might have stopped off for coffee, gone shopping on Milsom, or taken her clothes to the launderette along the way. Loads of opportunities for someone to slip the paper in her pocket.”
“So,” Val said, “the question isn’t only ‘Who killed Oona?’ but also ‘Where’s the book?’ ‘Who took the paper?’ ‘Who put it back again?’ Do those questions have anything to do with each other?”
“If we answered one, could we answer the others? Or will the questions continue to pile up until my head explodes?”
* * *
* * *
I’m going down to the cellar this morning,” I told Val as I walked him to the front door Wednesday morning. I wore only my short silk robe and hoped Mrs. Woolgar wouldn’t get it in her head to come upstairs two hours early.
“You won’t get lost?” Val asked. It was a little joke. I’d spent a quiet afternoon the previous autumn down in the cellar unaware that everyone in Bath—it seemed—thought I’d been kidnapped.
I kissed Val on the nose. “I thought I’d poke round the furniture to see if there are any small pieces we could use in the exhibition. While Zeno continues to fuss over a central display—or any display, for that matter—I’m going with Oona’s entry idea using Lady Fowling’s Queen Anne desk.”
The shred of a frown crossed Val’s face, and he cocked his head as if listening to some other voice. He drew breath and seemed about to speak, but I heard a noise from the lower-ground-floor flat.
“Mrs. Woolgar emerges!” I whispered. “Have a good day!”
He left, and I scampered back upstairs, followed by Bunter, who dashed past me into my flat and to the front window, where he took up a pigeon-watching position.
I made a second cup of tea and dropped another slice of bread into the toaster. I heard my phone ping and went in search of it, to find a text from Dinah.
Dad’s offer—£200 or Crowdey would paint/replace outlets for free
I held my breath as I replied.
Which did you take?
Her answer came quickly.
£££
“Ha!” Bunter flinched. “Sorry, cat,” I said, and texted Dinah.
Smart girl
I caught myself too lat
e, and followed up immediately.
Sorry—smart woman!
I hope she’d asked for cash.
24
Must the invitations to the gala opening be online only?” Mrs. Woolgar asked at our briefing. “A properly printed request sent through the post carries so much more weight.”
“Let’s do both,” I said.
“We will indicate it is formal attire, won’t we?”
“Yes, I suppose so,” I replied with little enthusiasm. My heart sank at thoughts of my wardrobe. Back to the charity shops—my income may have blossomed in the last six months, but not so much as I could spend a few hundred quid on an evening dress. Mrs. Woolgar, on the other hand, could probably whip hers up on her sewing machine in an afternoon.
“Shall I begin on the invitation design?”
“Yes, why don’t you,” I said. “Wouldn’t it be lovely to have the invitation look like the cover of a book? Perhaps one of her ladyship’s own books, as they are that exquisite tooled leather with gold lettering.”
Mrs. Woolgar watched me for a moment, enigmatic behind her thick specs, before replying, “It’s worth a try.”
A ringing endorsement.
I heard the distant pinging of my mobile, left on the desk in my office.
Ping ping ping
Three pings, three texts. And then it began to ring.
“If that’s all we have,” I said, “I’d better see to that.”
I caught the phone on its last ring before going to voice mail and had no time to look at the caller.
“Hayley.” It was Val, and he sounded as if he’d been running a race. “Listen, your list—”
“Aren’t you in class?”
“Yeah, just stepped out into the corridor. They’ve got five minutes to critique their partner’s first lines. About the list you made.”
“What list?”
“Things to do for the exhibition. I saw it the other day when we were going over the printout of Lady Fowling’s odd phrases—do you remember?”
Murder Is a Must Page 25