“Do you hear something?” Edwina spoke softly and directly into Beryl’s ear. “I think whoever we are looking for is up ahead.” Beryl simply nodded rather than speaking and risking being overheard. She turned down the flame in her lantern and motioned for Edwina to do the same. As soon as she did so Beryl felt certain the walls on either side of them were closing in even tighter. Her heart clattered and thwacked in her chest as the air became damper and far cooler than it had at the surface. It brought to mind the root cellar of the house where she grew up. But rather than being surrounded by crates of onions, burlap sacks of potatoes, and buckets of damp sand into which the family cook had packed carrots for winter storage, she was pressed on one side by a jagged, sooty rock wall and on the other by a line of coal carts set in line along a track.
The sound continued to bounce as oddly around the mine shaft as the light did and she became convinced there was indeed someone else in the mine. Reluctantly she turned the wick on her lamp so low it gave off no more than a small glow through the grimy glass. She hoped whomever it was that they could hear had a lantern of his own that cast sufficient light to make sure they wouldn’t notice hers or Edwina’s. The path bent slightly up ahead and so did the track the carts used to transport the coal up from the depths of the mine. She and Edwina pressed close to the carts rather than the rock wall. The path was well-worn below her feet along the track’s edge and in the low light she needed all the help she could get to keep from slipping. As she rounded the corner she stumbled against something sticking out of one of the carts. It was all she could do to stay on her feet.
Edwina ploughed into her back and Beryl wished she had been wearing her sturdy expedition boots rather than the party shoes she had donned for the fete. Edwina was a small woman but her feet did a job on Beryl’s Achilles’ heels. The women lifted their lanterns simultaneously and Beryl heard Edwina allow a breathless squeak to pass her lips before she covered her mouth with her small hand. The dead-eyed gaze of Martin Haynes stared up at the ceiling of the mine. He lay on his back atop a load of coal and his feet overhung the side of the cart. Even in the low light Beryl could see a knife handle protruding from his chest.
“I think it may be safe to guess that Martin Haynes was Morris Howe, don’t you?” Edwina said.
“I expect you’re right. But I don’t think he killed himself, do you?” Beryl asked. Edwina shook her head, but before she could reply, the sounds from deeper in the mine came louder and what Beryl thought were footsteps clattered towards them. She pressed a finger to her lips and pressed back against the wall opposite the body. Edwina followed her lead and they stood waiting for whoever it was that was on the way.
The sound of footsteps grew louder still and out of the corner of her eye Beryl detected a shadow moving along the wall. She squinted in the direction of the motion and despite the low light she made out the figure of a person hurrying in their direction.
Edwina seemed to see it, too. She gripped Beryl’s elbow in a tight squeeze. Out of the shadows another lantern appeared and illuminated a familiar figure.
Beryl slipped the pistol from her pocket and stepped forward. The knowledge she did not need to go any farther down into the pit gave her a surge of confidence and renewed enthusiasm for their purpose. Edwina must have turned up the wick in her lamp because suddenly it seemed as if the tunnel was bathed in a warm glow.
“Stop!” Beryl shouted, aiming her pistol at Miss Chilvers.
“You don’t understand,” Miss Chilvers said. “We mustn’t stay here.” She lunged forward a few steps. Beryl squeezed off a shot and it landed just shy of Miss Chilvers’ feet. She froze in place and Beryl thought from the panicked look on her face that the secretary must have some sort of phobia of firearms.
“Don’t do that, Beryl. Any spark could set the coal dust alight. Even sparks from the cart wheels have caused disasters,” Edwina said.
“I don’t think telling our suspect that my weapon can’t be used was the best strategy, Edwina. She could stay in here all day if that is the case,” Beryl said, lowering her weapon. She felt a standstill was in the offing until she realized Miss Chilvers still looked terrified. “Or maybe she would rather not stay under any circumstances.”
“We are all in danger,” Miss Chilvers said. “Please, we must get entirely clear of the mine.” Beryl waved the pistol at her again but it was more because she liked the feel of it in her hand rather than that she planned to use it. She had no intention of testing Edwina’s assertion about sparks.
“You’re not going anywhere until you explain what you are doing here,” Beryl said. “And what you know about poor Martin Haynes, or should I say, Morris Howe.” Beryl pointed the pistol back at the pair of feet dangling out of the coal cart directly behind them.
“If you don’t want to end up like Morris, you have to get out of the mine. There won’t be anything left of any of us if we don’t move away from here immediately,” Miss Chilvers said.
“You’re the saboteur?” Edwina said. “What have you done down there?”
“I’ve rigged the mine with explosives. The timer is already set,” Miss Chilvers said. “If we don’t get away from here we will all be killed.”
“How long until it goes off?” Beryl said.
“We may just make it to the colliery office if we hurry,” Miss Chilvers said.
“All right,” Beryl said. “But I’m right behind you and I promise you that I didn’t miss your feet by accident. If I need to shoot you I won’t have any compunction in doing so.”
Beryl kept her pistol trained on Miss Chilvers’ back as they rushed away from the mine entrance and towards the colliery office. She and Edwina followed closely. A deep rumbling sound came up from the mine as they burst through the door. Edwina pushed it closed behind them. Within an instant the ground beneath their feet trembled and shook. A giant blasting noise filled Beryl’s ears and left them ringing. The windows of the colliery office exploded and shards of glass sailed through the air. A picture detached from the wall and tumbled to the floor, the frame shattering at Miss Chilvers’ feet. Overhead, the ceiling splintered with jagged cracks and chunks of plaster rained down on their heads.
Beryl was grateful for Edwina’s insistence on donning the miners’ helmets. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed the brick wall behind her begin to buckle. She felt a tug on her arm and someone dragging her backward as the wall caved in. She lost her balance and landed in a heap on the floor next to Edwina. She was pleased to note she held tightly to her pistol but was discouraged to realize she had lost sight of her target in the fray.
When the shaking and rolling beneath her feet died away she looked at the spot where she had last seen Miss Chilvers.
“You don’t suppose she got away, do you?” Edwin asked. Beryl, whose eyesight had always been remarkable, squinted through the swirling dust. Much to her relief a pair of feet clad in low-heeled sensible shoes stuck out from beneath the rubble.
“Her body hasn’t gone anywhere. I cannot speak for her soul,” Beryl said. She stood and Edwina scrambled to her feet, too. They reached out and began lifting bricks from the prone figure. A second rumble from the ground rolled beneath their feet.
“Aftershocks,” Beryl said. Edwina nodded. A moan came from below the bricks and the pair lifted off debris from Miss Chilvers as quickly as they possibly could.
* * *
Edwina’s ears still rang from the terrific noise of the explosion. She kept looking at Miss Chilvers’ face, trying to see how the woman she had met days earlier could be the same person surrounded by piles of rubble before her now. How was the mine explosion tied to the theft of the jewelry? No matter how she turned it over in her mind she still had more questions than answers.
“You’re the one who killed Mr. Cunningham, aren’t you?” Edwina said. “We found Mrs. Ecclestone-Smythe’s jewelry in your handbag and we know from its rightful owner that she had entrusted it to Mr. Cunningham. The fact that you have it tells me you’re the
one who killed him.”
“Do you mind if I sit down?” Miss Chilvers asked. She pointed at a chair in the waiting area of the reception room. Edwina nodded and the younger woman sank into it as if her legs had lost their ability to hold her up. Edwina thought Miss Chilvers suddenly looked much older than her years. She almost felt sorry for her.
“Were you engaged to Mr. Cunningham and became jealous when you found out about his relationship with Mrs. Ecclestone-Smythe?” Edwina asked. “Is that why you killed him?”
“I was never engaged to Mr. Cunningham, or anyone else for that matter,” Miss Chilvers said. “In fact, I don’t even believe in marriage. It had absolutely nothing to do with romance and everything to do with Mr. Cunningham’s bad character. If he hadn’t been a blackmailer he wouldn’t have lost his life.”
“He found out about the sabotage, didn’t he?” Beryl asked.
“He did. The man always was far too nosy. He was always sneaking around, taking notes about the miners coming and going. Were they late for a shift, what did the other miners have to say about them, were their papers in order. He ended up stumbling across Martin damaging some of the equipment. If he was the sort of employee that Mr. Ecclestone-Smythe had believed him to be, he would’ve reported it to his employer immediately. Instead he started blackmailing Martin.” Edwina noticed something had shifted in Miss Chilvers’ face. It seemed determined, hardened almost, and the efficient but pretty secretary she had met earlier seem submerged beneath a completely different personality.
“What does Martin Haynes and his involvement with the sabotage have to do with you though?” Beryl asked. “You weren’t romantically involved with Mr. Haynes instead, were you?” How like Beryl, Edwina thought, to continue to consider a romantic entanglement the key to the mystery. Edwina was glad she reserved her romantic notions for the pages of the novels she so loved to read. As far as she was concerned, real life was far less romantic.
“I thought I had already made that clear. I have no interest in that sort of thing whatsoever,” Miss Chilvers said. “We were colleagues, comrades even.”
“You’re a Communist,” Beryl said. Miss Chilvers nodded.
“Exactly. I wasn’t here only because I was interested in mining reform. Although that’s a huge part of it. If you stop the mines from producing coal you cripple a country. A crippled country is much more interested in reform than one where things are limping along however slowly,” Miss Chilvers said.
“I had heard there were Communist operatives working all over England but I didn’t realize they ever recruited young women such as yourself,” Edwina said. “I thought it was just a rumor.”
“I should have thought you and Miss Helliwell would be more willing to imagine equal opportunity for women in the Communist Party than the average person. Your own exploits”—she pointed to Beryl—”and the business you’ve engaged in indicate a willingness to think of women as equal to men in ways that the ordinary citizen is not.”
“So you killed Mr. Cunningham to keep him from exposing your plans to grow the Communist Party?” Edwina asked.
“Martin was beginning to lose his nerve. Lionel Cunningham kept upping his demands for money and I knew from past experience with blackmailers that he was unlikely to stop. When Martin finally came to me and told me what had happened I knew something had to be done.”
“Why would Martin tell you?” Beryl asked. “Why wouldn’t he simply take care of the problem himself?”
“Because I outrank him in the organization,” Miss Chilvers said. “In fact, I recruited him for the job. As I keep saying, Communism offers equal opportunities for women. The two of you should consider joining. You would find a great deal more support for your ambitions and respect for your capabilities with us than you have under the current system. Martin understood that I was the one in charge so he came to me to solve the problem.”
“How long have you known what was going on?” Edwina asked.
“Martin told me about it the day before the pigeon race,” Miss Chilvers said. “The timing couldn’t have been better if I had planned it. Mr. Cunningham had had that terrific argument with Mr. Ecclestone-Smythe the day before he died, too. I lied when I told you I had not heard what they had said. I knew that the business was in trouble and I knew that Mr. Cunningham knew it, too. It didn’t take a genius to notice that he and Mrs. Ecclestone-Smythe had been conducting an affair. They thought they were being so discreet, but it was written all over her face every time she came to the office ostensibly to visit her husband.” Miss Chilvers gave a slight shudder.
“How did you know that the business was in trouble?” Edwina asked.
“It’s my business to know such things. Not only was I well connected to sources of information through the Communist Party, but I’m also a very good secretary. And what secretary doesn’t know everything about her employer?” Miss Chilvers asked. “He trusted me completely and sometimes even confided his troubles to me. All it took was a few encouraging words and some sympathetic clucking to get him to reveal that he was worried about the mine closing. The man was moving money from one of his corporations to another, robbing Peter to pay Paul so to speak. The entire thing was a giant shell game and there was only one piece propping it up,” Miss Chilvers said.
“Mrs. Ecclestone-Smythe’s jewelry?” Edwina asked.
“Exactly. It was a stroke of luck that I solved more than one problem at the same time that morning at Mr. Cunningham’s pigeon loft. Not only did I get rid of the person who could expose Martin for who he really was, I got my hands on the one thing keeping the mine afloat. The sabotage was almost more of a creative flourish rather than a necessity,” Miss Chilvers said.
“So you just stabbed him? That morning in the loft?” Beryl asked. Miss Chilvers nodded. “What did you use?”
“I took one of the knives from the kitchen at the boardinghouse. Because I had the element of surprise, it was an easy thing to overpower him. Mr. Cunningham never saw it coming. After he was dead, I noticed a bulge in his jacket pocket, and I found he was in possession of Mrs. Ecclestone-Smythe’s entire jewelry collection. Naturally I helped myself to them,” Miss Chilvers said.
“There was no knife with the body. What did you do with that?” Beryl said.
“I expect she took it back to the boardinghouse, cleaned it up, and put it back in the drawer,” Edwina said.
“You really would have been a wonderful fit for the organization,” Miss Chilvers said. “It’s not too late for you to join. All you need to do is let me go. I’d even be happy for you to keep the jewelry since I was never planning to gain from it personally anyway. Although if you keep it all to yourself, you wouldn’t be a very good Communist.”
“I don’t think anything would make me a very good Communist even though I have no intention of keeping things that don’t belong to me. I am happy just the way I am and will be happier still when you are safely behind bars,” Edwina said.
“What about the birds Lionel Cunningham was supposed to take to the race? You haven’t left them locked up somewhere to die have you?” Beryl asked.
“Of course not. If I wanted to make it look as though Lionel had absconded with them I needed to take them so I grabbed the basket and took them along to Martin. He secured them in his loft and had been taking care of them ever since,” Miss Chilvers said. “Although, I suppose someone else will have to take care of all the birds in his loft now.”
“That ties everything up then, doesn’t it, Edwina?” Beryl said.
“It does except for one detail. If your motorcar is undamaged by the blast, Beryl, I suggest we use it to deliver Miss Chilvers to the police station in Walmsley Parva at once.”
Chapter 43
Crumpet heard the visitor first and went scampering off towards the scullery to head off the intruder.
“That will be Simpkins with the evening paper, I expect,” Beryl said, reaching for a second glass on the drinks tray and pouring in a generous tot of Scotch whiskey
. She crossed the room and stood waiting at the door as Simpkins followed Crumpet into the parlor.
“How did you know he would be here?” Edwina glanced up from the comfort of her favorite wingback chair. She looked the very picture of feminine domesticity with her small slipper-clad feet propped up on a footstool and her hands busied with her latest charity knitting project.
“Because she asked me to fetch it for you, Miss Edwina,” Simpkins said, trading the newspaper for the glass of whiskey.
“Archie telephoned yesterday while you were out to say his article concerning our involvement in the Hambley case would be in this evening’s edition of the paper. I wanted to be sure we read it as soon as it was available,” Beryl said. She thought it best not to share with Edwina that she also wanted to be sure they read it in the privacy of the Beeches in case there was anything in the article that did not paint either their fledgling business or Walmsley Parva in a flattering light.
Beryl flipped quickly through the paper and found the article she sought. “ ‘Female Sleuths Solve the Case—A Tale of Murder, Sabotage, and Financial Intrigue by Archie Harrison,’” Beryl read aloud. “ ‘Intrepid sleuths Edwina Davenport and Beryl Helliwell have brought to heel a ring of labor agitators bent on murder and mayhem in the quiet Kentish countryside.’ ” She continued to read the rest of the article, pausing now and again for dramatic effect. Archie had done a remarkably fine job of presenting the pair of them as consummate professionals and ingenious detectives.
Beryl felt a warm glow of satisfaction that had long eluded her. She had spent years dashing about the globe undertaking one adventure after another, but at the end of each she always experienced a nagging certainty that something was lacking. She felt far more proud of what was written in Archie’s article on their business than she had of any of the scores of other reports of her exploits. Perhaps it was that she was being valued for her brains as much as for her wit or her daring. She looked at Edwina whose knitting lay abandoned across her lap. It occurred to her that the real difference was that she had equally shared the accomplishment with a dear friend. A thoroughly uncharacteristic lump rose in her throat and she swallowed it down before continuing.
Murder Flies the Coop Page 27