The Woman Died Thrice

by Evelyn James

  “When I went back through the files I started to see things I had missed before, and other things jogged my memory. I had had concerns then, but had pushed them aside. I told you about the paintbrush in her hand, but there was more. Miss Wignell had a bruise on her left cheek. It might have happened as she fell in the water, but it rather suggested someone had struck her. There were slight tears in the cloth of her clothes about her shoulders, as if something had forcibly held her down and in the struggle the seams had ripped. None of which would fit with a suicide.

  “I looked at the case closer, especially the witness statements and there I found the discrepancy. Mrs Hunt declared at the inquest she had been asleep throughout the incident, but in her very first statement she said she had awoken to the sound of a splash and hunted in the reeds for Miss Wignell before finding her dead. She said this was how she came to have wet clothes when the police were called. It was possible Mrs Hunt had made an error with one of her statements, it does happen. But it had me curious.

  “I went through the rest of the statements collected at the time and among them was one given by a Bill Ayres. It turns out this Mr Ayres had taken a shine to Miss Wignell. They were both holiday-makers at the same hotel. They had spent time together and Miss Wignell had confided a lot in him. She told Bill, the day before she died, that she was certain her tutor, Mrs Hunt, was stealing from her parents. She was going to reveal her as soon as they returned to Brighton. Mr Ayres was convinced that Mrs Hunt had killed the girl to prevent her crimes being revealed.”

  Inspector Wake paused dramatically, glancing between Gateley and Clara.

  “It all made a wicked kind of sense,” he continued. “Miss Wignell learned that her tutor was taking money from her parents without them knowing, perhaps siphoning it out of the housekeeping wages, or asking for money for textbooks she never bought. Miss Wignell was young and naïve. She intended to tell her parents but, perhaps before having the chance, she revealed herself to Mrs Hunt. Perhaps they argued and Miss Wignell declared what she knew, or perhaps she was not discreet enough. In any case, Mrs Hunt decided she would have to deal with the girl and what better way than to say she had drowned herself? The girl was known to be temperamental, as it was. Who would question it?

  “While out on their daily walk Mrs Hunt struck. Dazing the girl with a blow to begin with and then dragging her into the water. The girl struggled, in the process her clothes were ripped slightly at the shoulders, but in the end she was overcome. Still clutching her paintbrush she drowned. Mrs Hunt then played the distressed tutor, first calling for help, then making out to the police that she had tried to save the girl. Later on, concerned that someone might wonder why she failed to reach the girl in time, she expanded on the idea and said she had been asleep the whole time.

  “None of this can be proved with Mrs Hunt dead, but it does offer the idea that someone was out for revenge. The irony of Mrs Hunt drowning in the exact spot her charge did is hard to overlook.”

  “Did Mr Ayres share his views at the inquest?” Clara asked, thinking that the Wignells were once more looking like prime suspects in Mrs Hunt’s death.

  “No. The statement was overlooked. My fault, I’ll admit. It was flimsy, anyhow. Nothing more than hearsay. Could have even been the case that the police felt he was a rather over emotional boy who had taken the death hard. There was no proof and you can’t go around voicing baseless suspicions.”

  “Was there any indication that the parents had learned of his concerns?” Clara pressed.

  “It doesn’t look like it,” Inspector Wake shrugged his shoulders. “They were certainly not aggrieved by the outcome of the inquest. Had they suspected murder I think they would have pushed the police harder.”

  “And Bill Ayres? What became of him?”

  “That I cannot tell you,” Wake shook his head.

  Clara sighed. What had first looked like a promising lead now seemed to crumble. Bill Ayres was the only person to suspect Miss Wignell was murdered, but he could be anywhere now, living his own life. Unless he had somehow shared his suspicions with her parents, she could no more say that they had a motive than before.

  “It is something,” Inspector Wake said gently, seeing her disappointment. “It would give someone a damn good reason for killing Mrs Hunt.”

  “If they knew of it,” Clara said solemnly. “But you are right, it is something, and, if nothing else, it goes to show that Mrs Hunt was more horrid than ever I imagined. If Ayres’ suspicions were correct, then she was a cold-blooded killer and a thief as well.”

  “I’ll keep on looking,” Inspector Wake assured her.

  Inspector Gateley gave another huff.

  Inspector Wake showed Clara out of the police station, the day was brightening up and when he offered to summon the car for her, Clara shook her head.

  “The rain has stopped, I will quite happily walk,” she told him.

  Inspector Wake dipped his hat to her and then headed off in the opposite direction. Clara walked up the road, passing the Post Office on her way. She was just coming to the edge of the village when she heard someone shout behind her. She turned and saw the grocer’s boy rushing in her direction.

  “Are you Miss Fitzgerald?” he asked, running up to her out-of-breath. “The postmistress said she thought you were.”

  “I am,” Clara told him. “What is the matter?”

  “Telegram for you. I was going to run it to the hotel. I get a penny for that,” the boy handed her an envelope then galloped off once again to get back to his other tasks.

  Clara turned over the envelope in her hand, but it just bore her name and nothing more revealing. She tore it open with her thumb under the flap and pulled out the telegram. She read it and her heart skipped. It was from Inspector Park-Coombs and it offered yet another insight into Mrs Hunt’s past. It read;

  “Hunt arrested for theft 1890 along with husband. Using alias Hardwich. Husband went to prison.”

  Clara folded the telegram back up.

  “Well, well. Mr Hardwich, we shall have to talk.”

  Clara hurried back up the road to the hotel.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Clara was breathless when she entered the hotel. Mr Stover gave her his usual scowl, but she was by now used to ignoring him. Clara made her way to the first of the various hotel lounges and peered in the door. There was no sign of Mr Hardwich, so she headed for the next, that too was empty of her suspect and, ultimately, she found him in the very last lounge she searched. Mr Hardwich was nursing a tall glass of tonic water and looked rather unwell.

  Clara settled herself in a seat opposite him and did not at first disturb him. It was enough to observe him and contemplate who this man was. Was he a murderer? He did not much look like one. Mr Hardwich was in his late sixties, he was a stocky fellow, though it would be going too far to call him fat. He was the sort of person who is rather solid, but not from over-indulgence, rather he was born that way. He had a moustache and receding hair, though what remained was still very dark. His face was round and usually quite agreeable, he seemed a light-hearted soul who took no matter dreadfully seriously.

  Mr Hardwich was one of life’s chancers, and he fully accepted that sometimes, when taking a chance, luck was not on your side. He took this knowledge sanguinely enough and did not allow it to disturb him unduly. He was a genial soul who had done rather well out of his life of dubious opportunities, which he also put down to luck. He was quite comfortable in his retirement, which was more than could be said for many a poor soul.

  Clara surveyed him up and down. Mr Hardwich clutched his head in one hand and seemed to be making a determined effort not to open his eyes, thus he had not noticed Clara’s presence.

  “Are you unwell Mr Hunt?” Clara asked.

  Mr Hardwich opened his big brown eyes, which were rather doleful, like a hound’s, and at once realised his mistake. He smiled politely at Clara.

  “Caught out,” he said softly. “Very good, Miss Fitzgerald. Who t
old you?”

  “It was an assumption,” Clara admitted. “Based on the information that once upon a time you and your wife went by the surname of Hardwich.”

  “Ah! The rogue always catches himself out with his own complacency! I haven’t used the name Hardwich in ten years. I thought no one would remember.”

  “People are not so forgetful.”

  “So I see,” Mr Hardwich, now revealed as really Mr Hunt, took a delicate sip of his tonic water. “You must excuse me, I have the most shocking megrim.”

  “I apologise for disturbing you when you are under the weather, but it was important.”

  “You want to know about my relationship with my estranged wife?” Mr Hunt attempted to nod his head and regretted it. “I suppose that is logical enough. You are still looking for her murderer and I look most promising.”

  “That is unfortunately true,” Clara agreed. “Not only were you estranged from your wife, but you came here under an assumed name and lied about knowing her. Perhaps you would care to explain?”

  “Where to begin?” Mr Hunt smiled sadly.

  “Why not start by explaining how you came to be here?”

  “If only it were so simple to consider that a beginning… Oh, well, let us try,” Mr Hunt took a breath and settled back in his chair so he could look at Clara easier. “Now, I suppose it would be three or four months ago. A letter came through my door. It purported to be from my wife, though the hand was rather unfamiliar to me. The letter writer appeared to have foreseen this and excused the writing by stating they were very unwell. That is, my former wife, Mrs Hunt as she was, was very unwell.

  “I was a little shaken by the news. Not least because I had put my wife long out of my mind, or at least I thought I had. That letter dredged up a lot of unhappy emotions.”

  “Such affairs, estrangements, can lead to a lot of resentment,” Clara noted.

  Mr Hunt almost laughed.

  “If only it was so simple, Miss Fitzgerald!” he said. “I had never wanted to be estranged from Mrs Hunt, I love her today as much as I loved her from the very first time we met.”

  Mr Hunt became quiet, staring into some internal space where hurt still lingered.

  “I am not deluded to the fact she could be a deeply unpleasant woman,” he mused. “I have even heard her called wicked. She had her own demons. They ate away at her. I knew her before they had so completely consumed her. I remember who she was then.”

  “Who was she, Mr Hunt?” Clara asked. “For I have only seen the aspects of a woman who was hard-hearted, perhaps even cruel.”

  “She could be both of those things,” Mr Hunt made no effort to deny Clara’s statement. “My wife was a complicated woman. Inside she ached deeply. She was born into what is best described as a slum and her father abandoned the family early on. Her mother could not sustain the family and they all ended up in the workhouse. As was the practice the children were separated from their mother, Mildred and her sister found themselves alone. Their mother died when they were seven and five, so then it was just those two little girls against the world. They became inseparable and they swore that nothing would ever come between them.

  “But, of course, life moves on. The girls were eventually found positions as domestic servants in different parts of the county and had to communicate by letter. Mildred began to feel dreadfully alone and began to concoct an idea of how she could reunite with her sister. She saved what little money she had. It was around then that she had been asked to teach at the local church Sunday school. She was actually well-lettered as the workhouse made sure its charges were educated. Mildred took the role and eventually found she had a knack for it. This ultimately led to her persuading her employer to allow her to study to become a teacher. I think the arrangement was agreeable enough to both, as she was not much good as a domestic.”

  Mr Hunt smiled to himself.

  “Mildred did exactly as she said she would and became a teacher. She was an intelligent woman and read widely, improving herself continuously. Ultimately, after she had moved between a few posts, she ridded herself of her past in the workhouse and came up with the story that her father had been a middle-class shopkeeper, who went bankrupt, forcing his children to gain employment.”

  “From what you tell me, Mrs Hunt made a success of her life? Why should she become so embittered?” Clara interrupted.

  “Financially Mildred could survive, and yes, she had improved her lot, but in other ways she felt bereft and deeply hurt,” Mr Hunt explained. “She had raised herself up for the sake of her sister, so they might be together again. Then a blow came when her sister wrote to her and told her about a young man she intended to marry. Mildred viewed this as a betrayal. If her sister married then she would have a new life, one which would have little time for a sister. Mildred liked to possess people entirely. Once you were hers then you could be no one else’s. Her sister had broken that arrangement and Mildred was struck to her core. She never forgave her.”

  “That is a harsh reaction to the marriage of a sister,” Clara noticed Mr Hunt wince as a fragment of sunlight glinted in the window onto his face. She rose and pulled the curtain.

  Mr Hunt gave her a grateful smile before he carried on.

  “I don’t say Mildred was right, I merely explain how she was. She felt abandoned for the third time. First there had been their father leaving the family so they had to go to the workhouse. Second there had been their mother dying. And now her sister had destroyed her plans for them to live their days out together. These hurts warped her slowly, made her hard so she could not be betrayed again. But, also, Mildred learned to be selfish. She had strived for her sister, worked hard, only to be cast aside. From now on Mildred would concern herself only with her wellbeing.

  “We met when she was in her twenties and working at a girls school. She told me the story of the bankrupt father and I believed her. I had an image in my head of her mother and father sitting in dignified poverty, relying on their doting daughter. It was years before I learned the truth.

  “I loved Mildred almost at once. I was hopelessly smitten by her. Back then I worked in a greengrocer’s, but I had ambitions to improve myself. I was impressed by Mildred, perhaps even a little daunted by her. We did not marry for several years, not until I had worked my way up to owning my own shop, and that was hard, I must say. When we did marry I expected to see her erstwhile parents at the ceremony. When I asked about them, she broke down and explained her true circumstances. I was hurt she had lied, but I understood. She could do no wrong, my Mildred.

  “It was 1884. We lived well enough for a time, but Mildred was not content to be a housewife and insisted on returning to teaching. I didn’t realise she cared so much about her work. Perhaps she did not, perhaps it was just a way to get out of the house. Since most establishments will not accept married teachers, Mildred reverted to her maiden name and I became one of her best kept secrets.”

  Mr Hunt sighed. It was a heavy, morose sigh from a man who had been betrayed many times over, but who did not allow the fact to trouble him.

  “So we carried on for many a year. Until disaster struck, quite literally. My shop was consumed by fire and the insurance had lapsed. I was bankrupt overnight. We endeavoured to survive on Mildred’s income while I tried to find a way to improve my losses, without success. It looked as though we might lose the house, at which point Mildred suggested we try something rather radical. She was working then for a grand family, teaching their three daughters. Mildred said the family always went away for the summer and the house was left quite empty. But she knew where they locked up the valuables. Mildred was convinced we could rob the place and make it appear as if burglars had snuck in.

  “I went along with the idea as I always did. Of course, it went badly wrong. A neighbour spotted us. We ran away but when we tried to pawn what we had stolen, we were caught. To my astonishment Mildred created a story about how it was all my idea to raid the house and she had merely tagged along out of fear!
I went to prison and my wife walked free. She chose to have nothing further to do with me.”

  “You must have been angry,” Clara said sympathetically.

  “I can’t deny that I was,” Mr Hunt replied. “But it passed. I still loved her. She wanted no more to do with me, or so I thought, until that letter arrived. Thirty years I had waited for just such a thing, and then there it was, stating my wife was dying.”

  “Did you believe it?”

  Mr Hunt was silent a while, processing that thought. Finally he spoke;

  “No, I suppose it rather struck me as being out of character. But I was curious, nonetheless. The letter stated that Mildred was going on this charabanc trip and that, if I was to join her, she would aim to make amends. I was fool enough to believe that part.”

  “But when you got on board the charabanc it was not so?”

  “When I got aboard Mildred looked straight through me!” Mr Hunt snorted. “I knew then I had been right when I assumed the letter had been written by someone else. It was either a dreadful joke or some sort of strange way of reuniting me with my wife. In any case, it did not work. I did not speak with Mildred Hunt the entire time we were together on the charabanc, I am not even sure she recognised me.”

  “Why did you lie about your name?” Clara asked.

  “Because I felt foolish and didn’t want anyone to know what I was about. And…” Mr Hunt watched the bubbles pop at the edge of his glass of tonic water. “And I thought it might jog Mildred’s memory. Remind her of the price I paid for her freedom. But it did none of those things.”

  “That brings us to the most difficult question,” Clara paused briefly. “Did you kill your wife?”

  Mr Hunt snorted.

  “Why should I? I don’t get involved with such things as revenge, they are far too messy. No, I saw my wife alive and so it was. I was genuinely upset at her death,” Mr Hunt became solemn. “I meant to speak with her, to tell her I forgave her. I wanted us to be at peace.”