Mugs, Murder, and Mayfair

by L. A. Nisula

  “According to your theory.”

  “Do you have a better one?”

  I could tell he didn’t, as he changed the subject at once. “And you didn’t mention the gloves to Constable Polwarth?”

  “Is that you asking, or what you anticipate Inspector Fulson asking?” I wanted to know how annoyed to be with him.

  “Lupo asking.”

  “Then I would answer that, when we gave our report to Constable Polwarth, we thought we were reporting a mild vandalism case, not kidnapping and murder, so we didn’t expect the investigation to go very far, and something as small as gloves wouldn’t have seemed important as it was after the crime, and a perfectly logical thing to do when cleaning up glass. And why would such a sweet little puppy ask such a silly question? Would you like a treat for being such a good boy?”

  At the word treat, a furry little head popped up from behind the desk, and Lupo came over to me wagging his tail.

  “I didn’t know you were still on this case, sweetie. Have you found any really good clues?”

  “Now I’ll have him waiting for a treat for the rest of the evening,” Inspector Wainwright grumbled.

  I was going to apologize to Lupo when I noticed a half-empty packet of Lady Wentworth’s Good Doggie Nibbles by Inspector Wainwright’s tray of case files. I had the feeling it would not be Lupo’s first treat of the day, but I still couldn’t figure out why Inspector Wainwright would need a dog for what appeared to be nothing more than paperwork. Perhaps Lupo was particularly good at taking dictation or writing reports. I smiled at that thought, then turned my attention to Lupo so it would look like I was smiling at him.

  “I do have work to do, you know.”

  I gave Lupo a scratch behind the ears. “Do you have important work to do too, hmm? All right, I’ll let you get back to it.” I straightened up and put on my gloves.

  “Lupo, here,” Inspector Wainwright said curtly. I was a bit surprised when Lupo obeyed at once, wagging his tail as he went back behind the desk.

  I went out into the hall, then glanced back and saw Inspector Wainwright’s hand slide under the desk in what looked like the exact motion one would make if one were slipping one of Lady Wentworth’s doggie nibbles to a dog under the desk. I pretended I hadn’t noticed and closed the door behind me.

  When I got back to the shop, the door was still unlocked, Kate was making an effort at inventorying a shelf of books—although as she seemed to be counting the same books multiple times, I suspected she was spending more time worrying about being arrested than actually counting—and Ada was in the back and came out with a tea tray as soon as she heard the bell. “Cassie, how did it go? Kate, come have some tea.”

  Kate left the books in a pile and came over to the counter where Ada was pouring out. I waited until they were both there to say, “Inspector Wainwright thinks the whole thing is absurd, but he doesn’t seem to have any other answers.”

  Kate accepted the cup Ada held out to her. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it’s too bad Wainwright isn’t the inspector on this case.”

  Ada passed me a cup. “What exactly did he say?”

  I recounted our entire conversation while Ada kept serving tea and Mrs. Calahan’s scones. When I’d finished, Kate snorted, “And you got he thinks it’s absurd to accuse me from that?”

  I nodded, but as she said it, I realized I wasn’t quite certain why I thought Inspector Wainwright was on our side. “He agreed that our explanation was more logical than Inspector Fulson’s.” He hadn’t in so many words, but I’d had the impression he felt that way. “Besides, he wouldn’t have gotten Lupo involved if he thought I was helping a murderer.”

  Kate laughed at that, which had been my hope.

  Ada topped up Kate’s cup, then her own. “It makes no sense anyway. What would Kate’s motive be? And beyond that, I can’t think of a worse way to get rid of a damaging piece of evidence than to throw it through your own shop window, particularly with Cassie staying upstairs. The only way the mug through the window makes any sense is if Mr. Purnell wanted it to be found and connected to him, and if Cassie hadn’t been poking around, it wouldn’t have been.”

  Kate shook her head. “Well, I don’t think we can expect Fulson to see that kind of logic. It makes too much sense. What about Wainwright? Cassie, do you think he’ll help?”

  But something about what Ada had said was nagging at me. Belatedly, I answered, “Help? I suppose. He doesn’t like an unsolved murder.”

  Kate nodded. “Maybe Lupo will sniff something out. He seems to be the smartest one involved.”

  I didn’t hear Ada’s response, but then I barely noticed when she started clearing away the tea things. Kate was getting up to help when I realized what was bothering me. “It doesn’t make sense, does it? Inspector Wainwright had a list of people connected to Mr. Purnell.”

  “Right,” Kate said as she gathered up the plates. “The list of people Purnell owed money to. He left it out the day we went there after we told him about our visit to Mr. Purnell’s barber shop.”

  “And Mr. Clairidge’s name was on the list. But he didn’t owe Mr. Clairidge gambling money; Mr. Clairidge owed him blackmail money.”

  Kate paused. “You’re right, that doesn’t make sense.”

  “Could they have owed each other money?” Ada asked. “Perhaps Mr. Purnell was using the blackmail to avoid paying other debts.”

  I considered the idea. “I suppose, but it seems risky. And far more likely that whoever gave Inspector Wainwright the list either didn’t know what it was or lied about it. I wonder where Inspector Wainwright got that list. And for that matter, where Mr. Purnell found the information he used on the victims.”

  “Or where he found his victims. Wouldn’t that tell you where he got the information?” Ada asked.

  “I suppose it would depend on whether he found the victims first or the information.”

  “I would assume his shop either way,” Kate said. “That’s where the mug is from, and he would see plenty of customers. Perhaps they would let something slip while he was cutting their hair or shaving them, and then he could use it to find the blackmail materials.”

  The more I considered it, the more sense it made. “That’s certainly possible.”

  “It’s easy enough to figure out. You remember the names we saw in the file, right? Then we’ll just make a list of what we remember and go back to the shop in the morning and see if he has shaving mugs for them. That will tell us if they’re customers or not.” Kate was on her feet and halfway to the sales counter for pen and paper before I could think of any of the reasons it was a bad idea, although I was certain there were plenty of reasons against it. Still, it would give us something to do on the case that seemed constructive, which was better than spending the evening worrying about it.

  Chapter 7

  THE NEXT MORNING, KATE WAS EAGER to go to Mr. Purnell’s shop and test our theory, and I didn’t have the heart to suggest we leave it to the inspectors when she was the one being accused of murder, so we were on our way directly after breakfast, leaving Ada to work on the inventory alone again.

  If I’d thought it through, I would have realized that Saturday was a terrible day to go to the barbershop. When I glanced through the window, I could see that every seat had a customer in it, and there seemed to be at least two assistants I hadn’t seen before, one of whom was at the small desk by the door, meaning we couldn’t even use the crowd as a cover to sneak in. But then I wasn’t really certain that there was anything we could do there even if the place had been empty. The real point of the exercise was to make Kate feel she was doing something to stop what she seemed to think was the inevitability of her arrest, so there we were on the pavement outside of Mr. Purnell’s shop, trying to figure out how to compare the list of names we had cobbled together with the customer lists. Figuring out how to see the customer lists seemed a place to start, but I didn’t say that. At least Kate was distracted.

  Or I thought sh
e was. “So what do we do now?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “If there was an appointment book, perhaps we could get a look at that, but I didn’t see one when we went in before.”

  “There must be one, but if it’s not out, I don’t see how it helps us.” She stared at the shop. “I suppose we could look at the shaving mugs through the window. They might not all have one, but if we could get a few names, at least it would confirm that the shop is somehow connected to all this.”

  It didn’t seem like it could hurt, so we wandered over and tried to see through the window, only there was a glare on the glass and everything inside was in shadow, and I could barely make out the mugs, let alone the labels under them.

  “You ladies have more detective work? Jack’s your man for it.”

  We turned and found the messenger boy from the other day watching us.

  “Yes,” Kate said before I could answer. “We need someone to go in there and see if these people are customers by looking for their names on the racks of shaving mugs.”

  I realized we weren’t certain the boy could read, but before I could signal to Kate, he nodded his head and said, “Easy enough. You’re paying?”

  “Of course. Cassie, give him the names.”

  I knew a shorter list would be easier and probably get us the most accurate results, so I left off any name that we wouldn’t be able to check, and nothing terribly common like Smith or Jones, and nothing I was fairly certain belonged to a wealthy family. “Could you see if there’s a Donovan, Sinclair, Grayson, Reddy, or Ayler.” I hoped five wasn’t too many.

  “Donovan, Sinclair, Grayson, Reddy, or Ayler. Right. Give me two minutes.” And he darted inside.

  While we waited, Kate and I counted out our money but didn’t discuss the names. I wasn’t at all sure what we could do when we had them, but at least it would be another distraction for Kate.

  Jack was back in less than five minutes. “They all have spaces except for Ayler, but he could have a beard, couldn’t he? Then he wouldn’t need a shaving mug.”

  I had no idea if that was true or not, but it sounded sensible, so I nodded. “I hope we aren’t getting you in trouble.”

  “Not at all. I go in there whenever it’s crowded and see if anyone has anything they want delivered. No one noticed that I looked at the mugs while I was there. They just thought I was looking for likely customers.”

  Somewhat comforted by that, we paid him and headed for the nearest tea shop to consider what to do with the new information.

  “Well, that settles it, then,” Kate said once we were settled in with our tea and she was buttering her scones. “It would be ridiculous for someone to owe gambling money to that many of his own customers. One or two I could see if they put him onto a game somewhere, but all of them? They’d have to be running their own consortium.”

  I scraped a pattern into the frosting of my walnut cake while I thought. “It does seem odd. You’d think he’d meet other people and lose to them too, although perhaps he tried to pay them back in free haircuts?”

  Kate’s expression told me what she thought of that admittedly not very good theory. “So Inspector Wainwright really has a whole list of blackmail victims and potential murderers, and Inspector Fulson has no interest in hearing about it.”

  I immediately saw the problem with that theory. “Potential murderers of Mr. Purnell, but none of them would have motive to kill Mr. Clairidge.”

  “Well, neither do I,” Kate pointed out quite reasonably, “but that doesn’t stop me from being a suspect, although to Inspector Fulson, who does not seem to be thinking clearly about this.” She put more sugar in her tea and stirred it into a small whirlpool. “Maybe they killed Mr. Clairidge by accident. Maybe they didn’t know what Mr. Purnell looked like. No, that won’t do, he was their barber; they had to have seen him. Maybe they didn’t know he was their blackmailer, though, and when they saw him with Mr. Clairidge, they assumed he was being blackmailed by the same person they were.”

  “That’s possible. If someone sees two people together, they are more likely to think the one they don’t know is the criminal.”

  “Excellent. So now we have a good theory on the killer. What do we do next?”

  I sighed, knowing she wouldn’t like the answer. “Take it to Inspector Wainwright, I’m afraid.”

  “But it’s not his case.”

  “Would you rather talk to Inspector Fulson?”

  Kate chuckled into her tea. “The choices aren’t very promising, are they?”

  “No, but Inspector Wainwright hates loose ends, even if they aren’t his own, and he’ll be talking to all of those people about Mr. Purnell disappearing. If he has this theory in the back of his mind, perhaps he’ll come up with something useful.”

  Kate nodded. “It makes sense, although I’m not sure I’m up to seeing him again.”

  “It’s not a complicated message; we’ll send a mechanical bird.” Then I wouldn’t have to actually speak to him either.

  “That does sound better. It’s too bad there isn’t something more active that we could do though. Is there anything else on the list of names?”

  I picked up my fork and started on my cake. This was the sort of clue that Inspector Wainwright was best at. It had made Kate feel she was doing something, but really, it seemed more than a little pointless to look further now that we could show the connection. Inspector Wainwright was still investigating his missing persons case; if he turned up anything about a murder, or even an accidental death, in the course of it, he would see that it was handled properly. And really, it was the sort of thing he’d be better at, only because he had authority and resources we did not. Casually chatting with someone worked when they didn’t realize the information they had was something they ought to be hiding, but the whole point of blackmail was that the victim didn’t want anyone knowing the information, so it would have to be a very foolish victim indeed who tells random investigators what the blackmailer had on them. It was quite different than talking to the neighbors, even if it would keep Kate from worrying.

  Talking to the neighbors. “Mr. Fitzroy did say he may have seen someone running away from the shop that night.”

  “Do you think it was the killer?”

  “I don’t know. He wasn’t sure of the time or the day, really. But I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to go and take a look at some of these people, just to see if any of them match the description he gave.”

  That perked Kate up. “We could look them up in the London Directory back at the shop. Then I’ll be there when Mr. Bergman comes to put up the moldings. I need to watch to be certain they’re compatible with all of the alarms.” She went back to her scone with enthusiasm.

  When we got back to the shop, we found that Ada had made good progress on the inventory while we’d been gone, but then she liked to be busy when she was worried. She had also put the kettle on, so everything was ready for tea when we arrived. We told her the results of our search, and she nodded in all the right places and seemed properly impressed when we’d finished. “That’s something, at least. Do you think it will help Inspector Wainwright?”

  I took a second scone. “I don’t know, but he’s best equipped to look into it.”

  Kate was more confident. “It’s more information than he had before we looked into it. And he won’t let a crime go unsolved if he can avoid it, even if it isn’t his. It messes up the order of things.”

  “True,” Ada answered, “but it doesn’t really help with the disappearance, does it? I mean, if his barber has gone off on his own, it tells us nothing, and if he hasn’t, well, why would a blackmail victim kidnap the blackmailer, particularly if they came to kill him? And if they thought he was another victim, why not let him go? And if they figured out that they had been wrong, why not finish the job properly? For that matter, why kidnap him at all? Has Inspector Wainwright received a ransom note?”

  I thought back to his desk. “I didn’t see one in the file. It would have be
en there if he knew about it. But I suppose one could have been sent to someone not in contact with Scotland Yard. After all, it was his staff who reported him missing, not family, and I would expect a ransom note to go to the family.”

  “If there’s no ransom note, then why in the world would someone kidnap him?”

  It was a very good question, and one I was about to ponder until Kate pointed out, “I’m not being accused of the disappearance, only the murder. Inspector Wainwright can worry about that himself. I’ll find the London Directory.”

  I guessed that Kate wanted to feel she was doing something more to help her case, and as Ada didn’t say anything more about kidnapping theories, I assumed she agreed.

  Unlike their London Directory of Businesses, the copy of the residential directory Kate brought over had fallen to pieces at some point, which did make it easier for two people to use. I took A to Pollard, Rev. Arthur Tempest, and Kate went through Pollard, Bilton M.D. to the end. It seemed a bit silly as we were only getting residential addresses, but it kept Kate busy and her mind off of being a murder suspect until Mr. Bergman arrived to look at the window moldings. Fiddling with the alarms would do more to keep her mind occupied than anything I could come up with, so I insisted on finishing the list of names by myself so she could supervise the re-hooking-up, did a half-hearted job of it, then went to compose my note to Inspector Wainwright.