The Summerfield Bride

by C. G Oster

  “Oh dear heaven,” Harry lamented from inside the room.

  “What is it?” Livinia demanded and pushed herself past the shocked girl.

  “She’s dead,” the stunned girl finally said.

  “What do you mean dead?” Dory asked, stepping down from her pedestal.

  “Miss Vellsted. She’s dead. There’s blood.”

  Gasps and then one of the girls collapsed down onto the floor, another rushing to help.

  “The bride?” Dory asked.

  “Yes, the bride,” one of the other girls said sharply as if it was Dory’s fault, or that she was being insensitive for asking.

  Harry appeared, looking lost and wrung his hands.

  “Call the police,” Dory said and no one acted for a moment. Then the unsmiling seamstress rushed out of the room.

  Dory walked into the small hallway leading to the two large changing rooms with white, slatted doors. Livinia was staring into the far one and Dory walked toward her, finally seeing the bride lying on the floor, a knife prominently stuck into her stomach. The blood was starkly red in contrast to the white material.

  “Why must there always be bodies?” Livinia said sharply, anger fused into her voice. “Poor Corny. Who would do this to her?”

  Cornelia’s head was awkwardly held up by the wall and her eyes were staring. “She must have died very quickly. There isn’t much blood. The knife must have gone into her heart.”

  Livinia snorted loudly with disgust and walked away.

  Looking around, there was nothing much to see in the room, other than the dead girl lying in her wedding dress, but Dory noted there were two entrances into the changing room hallway. One from the measurement room where Dory had been with the seamstress, and on the other side, there was another entrance that led into the salon. There was also a door that led into the back.

  Dory knew she must not touch anything.

  “Uhm,” Harry said, standing at the other doorway, clearly incapable of managing this.

  Lady Pettifer stood with him. “What has occurred?”

  “There has been an incident,” Dory said. “The police have been notified, I take it?” Her eyes searched Harry’s face for confirmation, but he was too shocked to answer.

  “Yes, that French woman called the police,” Lady Pettifer said.

  How had Dory not noticed she was French? Because she had barely spoken.

  “Right. We must leave this area as untouched as possible,” Dory said. “Where does this door lead to?”

  “The storage area. The private area. No clients must go in there.”

  “There is an external door from the storage room?”

  “Yes, but it is always locked,” the man said, his voice high-pitched and whiny.

  Dory urged him away from the changing room. The others had already been shooed away or had left of their own accord, and they were all sitting in the salon with varied expressions on their faces. A few were crying. Others sat in stunned silence.

  “The bride has been murdered,” Dory said quietly as she stood with Lady Pettifer. “With a knife.”

  Livinia was pacing, smoking angrily. Some met tragedy with fury and Livinia was one of them. A senseless thing had just happened. Not just this, but worry for Vivian as well. The cracks in Livinia’s exterior were showing.

  Unfortunately, they couldn’t leave. Someone had just murdered that poor girl and it was likely that person was in this room. Looking around, it was hard to imagine any of them doing it, but murderers didn’t always present themselves and their deeds.

  “Who could have done such a thing?” one of the girls lamented. “She was so excited about this wedding, and to be murdered. It is… unconscionable.”

  No one else said anything and the ringing silence stretched. It continued until the Police came. Four of them arrived, followed by a man in a beige trench coat, which she assumed was the man in charge of this case. Much older than Ridley, with grey hair and broad, non-remarkable features.

  “DI Capshaw,” he said when he entered the salon, his eyes traveling over the gathered party. “Where’s the victim, then?”

  One of the girls loudly broke out in sobs.

  “Tact may not be this man’s gift,” Lady Pettifer said quietly so only Dory could here.

  “This w-way,” Mr. Harlowe stammered.

  For a moment, Dory had wondered if Ridley would come, but in hindsight, it was unlikely. This wasn’t even his district. Instead, this man, Capshaw, was the investigator.

  One of the uniformed men stood in the doorway with his arms crossed, surveying them sullenly. They were quite intimidating, Dory thought. But then someone in this room had likely dispatched that poor girl. Unless someone came through the locked door in the storage area. Saying that, they didn’t rightly know it was locked. No one had checked.

  If someone had come in through the salon, they would have been seen, wouldn’t they? They had all been sitting there. A murderer couldn’t just have walked in the door, snuck through the salon, murdered the girl in the dressing room and then snuck out again? Surely not.

  Dory was standing in front of the measuring mirror. She had not seen anyone walk through to the dressing room. Granted, she had been quite distracted. One simply didn’t expect a murder to occur at any particular point, did one? Certainly not in a fine Atelier like this. But it had happened.

  “I simply do not wish to be here any longer,” Livinia said, standing up.

  “Nor do I,” one of the other girls said, also standing and making to walk out.

  The policeman stretched his arms out to convey that no one was leaving.

  “Do you know who my father is?” the girl demanded. “I am Rose Wently, and my father is the Baron of Bitlefield. If you so much as touch me, he will have you fired.”

  The man looked uncomfortable for a moment, as if unsure what to do. Dory wouldn’t want to be the one standing in the way of these girls’ privileges and entitlements either. “Please, Miss. The investigator needs to ask a few questions.”

  “I don’t know anything. I have no idea who would do such a thing,” the girl spat.

  “You may not know who did this,” Lady Pettifer said, “but you may unwittingly reveal the murderer by your observations.”

  “What observations? I saw no one.” Rose chewed her cheek and was looking at Dory. “Technically, she is the only one I don’t know, and she was back there. So likely it’s her.”

  “Well, that is an admirable piece of deduction,” Lady Pettifer said tersely, in that tone that not even those girl would dare argue with. “But I think it is best you sit down, my dear.” It sounded polite, but that was an order, and the girl knew it. It was Lady Pettifer keeping order here—not the policeman.

  The DI returned to the room. “Alright, who’s who?”

  His rather open-ended question was met with silence.

  Chapter 6

  DORY SAT IN WHAT WAS probably Mr. Harlowe’s office. It was more traditional than the soft furnishings of the salon, with a wooden desk and wooden wainscot paneling on the walls. A fireplace was off to the left, but no fire burned in the grate today.

  In his personal space, Mr. Harlowe was not as orderly and there were piles of papers and also fabrics. He was not a tidy man.

  “Please state your relationship with the victim,” DI Capshaw said. A uniformed officer stood behind her as if she would try to abscond at any moment. Were they purposefully trying to be intimidating? Dory could imagine how tartly Livinia would answer his questions. Probably not even Churchill would intimidate Livinia. These girls knew their place, and it wasn’t to be intimidated by men like Capshaw.

  “I have no relationship with the victim,” Dory said, noting everything the man wrote down in his notepad.

  He looked at her with bored eyes, and Dory wondered if he really should be in this job considering the level of interest he was displaying.

  “None?”

  “I have never met her before.”

  “So you are o
f the other party having a fitting today?”

  “I was actually being measured. It is the first visit for us.”

  “But these two parties are not strangers, are they? There was some sort of reunion of sorts, wasn’t there?”

  Dory stared at him for a moment before she understood. “Oh, you mean, Livinia? Yes, she knows those girls from school, I believe she said.”

  “But Livinia was not invited to the wedding of the victim, Miss Cordelia Vellsted.”

  “I couldn’t say. I don’t believe so.”

  “Bad blood?”

  “No, she seemed surprised and pleased to see them. Chatted quite animatedly with them.”

  “Animatedly? Animosity, then?”

  With a frown, Dory considered him. It seemed he was twisting everything she said. “No,” she said forcefully. “It appeared to be acquaintances catching up. As you would bumping into someone fortuitously.”

  “So this meeting wasn’t planned?”

  “No. Not at all.”

  “And you went to this school too?”

  “I think you can deduce that I did not.” The suggestion denoted someone who didn’t understand people at all. No one in their right mind would pitch her in with those girls. Her accent for one, not to mention her clothes. And mere weeks ago, she was covered from head to toe in coal dust.

  “Yet you are here with a bona fide lady.”

  “I was her paid companion for a time, and we have remained friends since.”

  “Enough that she comes wedding dress shopping with you.”

  “Yes.”

  “And who is paying for this dress? A place like this seems a bit rich for your blood.” So he could tell the difference between people like her and people like them.

  “The dress is a gift from Lady Pettifer,” Dory confirmed.

  With a lazy look, he scrawled something down in his notepad. She didn’t like this man, she concluded, and she had concerns about him as an investigator. He seemed to focus entirely on the wrong things.

  “So by extension, you do know the victim.”

  “In the sense that I have never spoken to or heard of her, or have previously known that she existed until today.” Even Dory was losing her patience with him. “Was the door in the storage room unlocked?”

  “How do you know about this door?” he asked sharply.

  “I asked Mr. Harlowe.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “To see if there was the possibility of someone coming in through the back unnoticed.”

  “Are you in the habit of keeping track of entrances?”

  For a moment, Dory had to consider what to say. “It seemed prudent to ask in case there was still someone intent on harm on the premises. Mr. Harlowe told me there was another entrance, one that could be used by an intruder without alerting the people in the salon—”

  “Or you who were the closest to the victim.”

  “Yes,” she said clearing her voice. “Was it unlocked?”

  “No,” he said after a while. “It was locked.”

  Which meant the murderer had likely been someone already there, or someone with a key to the door.

  “Describe your observations from the time you arrived—if you please,” he requested.

  Dory did as asked and described what she had noted as she’d arrived. Speaking to Mr. Harlowe, seeing the other party come into the salon from the back, Livinia greeting them, and then being taken to the measuring area. DI Capshaw asked questions, particularly about the bride’s movement, but Dory hadn’t particularly noticed the bride until seeing her on the floor in the dressing room with a knife in her gut.

  There had been no blood, so it must have struck her heart in an up-thrust movement, but she didn’t mention this to the man. He seemed the kind to jeer at her observations.

  “And who are you marrying in this fancy wedding dress?” he finally asked.

  “Captain Ridley, formerly DI Ridley.”

  The man’s eyebrows rose. “You are marrying DI Ridley. I know him.”

  Dory smiled tersely. Capshaw seemed to regard her in a new light. “You travel in broad circles, it seems. As a lady’s companion, how did you become acquainted with DI Ridley? He specializes in homicide, I believe.”

  Dory felt her cheeks flush slightly. “He was called in to investigate the murder of a maid at Lady Pettifer’s brother’s house.”

  “Murder there as well? They seem to follow you around, don’t they?”

  Again, he was insinuating something nefarious on her part, and she wondered if he made everything sound as if it had a diabolic purpose behind it.

  “And the culprit was found?”

  Now she didn’t know quite how to answer that, because the answer was yes, but it hadn’t quite been brought to trial as one would expect. The normal course of justice had been waylaid due to Lady Wallisford’s social standing. “The culprit has been… detained.” Technically it had been true. Although, Dory wasn’t entirely sure where she was at the moment. The last Dory had heard, Vivian had gone to retrieve her from her sanitorium in Switzerland. They hadn’t really spoken about how that had faired.

  “The culprit being?”

  “Lady Wallisford.” It was common knowledge. Quite the scandal in the right circles, but they were unlikely to be DI Capshaw’s circles.

  “I take it that is Livinia Fellingworth’s mother. Now that is interesting.”

  Again, this man seemed to focus on the wrong things. “I don’t think so,” Dory said. “More likely it would be rifts and strains within Cornelia Vellsted’s immediate relationships that would stir such resentment, I would guess.”

  Chewing his lip, the man considered her for a moment. She had no idea what the man was thinking, but from what she had learned about murder, there was always a reason behind it. Greed, arrogance, selfishness. That was where the truth would be uncovered. It would be in the relationships between the group of people surrounding Cornelia Vellsted. Murder tended to be personal.

  Perhaps her reading of this man was wrong, but he seemed to be focusing more on her and Livinia as suspects, when they were the most removed from the victim. How could that make sense, but it was perhaps only what she saw of his investigation.

  “Did you observe any resentment from Mr. Harlowe toward these girls?” the man finally asked. “Reaching the end of his tether with them?”

  “No,” Dory said. “As far as I’ve seen, he was very professional to them. I am sure they are his best clients.”

  DI Capshaw looked up at her. “Alright, you can go, but leave your details. I may well have more questions for you.” With a last look, he considered her and then dismissed her.

  Dory walked out both confused and overwhelmed. Everything about that interview seemed both onerous and misplaced. Perhaps he simply did things differently, a method that depended on putting his interviewees off kilter. What did she know?

  Returning to the sofa, she sat down and watched as Livinia was called in. Livinia marched with her head held high, not a sign of uncertainty around her. Still angry, it seemed.

  “Men came and took the body away while you were in there,” Lady Pettifer said with distaste. She didn’t like this. “Covered in a sheet, of course, but the knife was still… in her. Poor girl. Such a happy time and then someone does something like this to her. How was this man DI Capshaw?”

  “I have some reservations, but I am hardly one to judge. A different method, I would say.”

  Chapter 7

  RUSHING INTO THE RESTAURANT, Dory spotted Ridley sitting at a table. He was reading something and absently drinking a coffee. For a moment, she paused just to look at him. This was to be her husband. How in the world had she gotten so lucky?

  She had told him briefly over the phone about what had happened the previous day. With a smile, he looked up as she approached the table.

  “Hello,” she said. Would it be inappropriate to call him darling? It felt strange. What else should she call him? Michael?

&
nbsp; “There isn’t much on the menu today, I’m afraid,” he said. “Stewed haddock.”

  “Oh, alright.” Dory had learnt to eat whatever was available, whether she liked it or not, or even if it tasted all that well. “That’s nice.”

  “Would you like a coffee?”

  “Yes, please,” she said with a smile.

  “Quite some day you had yesterday,” he said, folding his newspaper over neatly and putting it on the table.

  “It was extraordinary. Such a strange thing. Poor girl. Very jarring for such a refined shop. Everyone was beside themselves. A DI Capshaw came to investigate,” she said.

  “Ah, Capshaw. Good investigator.”

  “Really?” That wasn’t the impression Dory had gotten at all. “He was throwing accusations around left, right and center. It was quite confusing the number of inferences he made.”

  “At times it helps to rattle a few cages and see what comes out.”

  Dory bit her lip, because she wasn’t sure she agreed. A man like that trying to rattle Lady Pettifer’s or Livinia’s cages probably wouldn’t have gotten him more than stern glares. “I’m not sure that is the right tac to take.”

  “He is a very experienced investigator and has a good track record. You should leave him to do his job. He’ll uncover the culprit.”

  Dory smiled. “I’m sure you’re right, of course. I suppose people do their investigations differently. How are things with you?”

  “Good,” he said. “I am still technically on leave. I have been approached again about taking up an office in Germany.”

  “Germany?”

  “To help oversee the reconciliation and reconstruction.”

  “You mean to keep an eye on the Germans.”

  “Yes, exactly.”

  Was this something he was considering? Did this mean they would move to Germany? The thought filled her with horror. But the enemy was now the vanquished. She hadn’t considered what that meant, but apparently people like Ridley were being brought in to oversee the transition to peace. It was awfully fast. They had been at war just a few weeks ago, and now they were the victors.