The Fossil Murder

by Evelyn James

  “Do you have news?” He asked hopefully.

  “I have questions,” Clara said in an apologetic tone. “I have discovered that the paper used to write the threatening letters is the same as you use to wrap up the more delicate exhibition specimens. The obvious conclusion is that someone with access to that paper has been writing those notes.”

  What little colour had been in Dr Browning’s face now drained away.

  “Someone working at the exhibition?” He said with horror. “Oh no.”

  “You did not have any suspicions?”

  Dr Browning slumped his shoulders as he replied in a weary voice.

  “No. None.”

  “You never noticed the paper for the threats was the same as the packing paper?”

  “I don’t pack the fossils,” Dr Browning replied. “Wallace and Percy are responsible for that. They unpack them when we arrive and pack them when we leave. The only time I would interfere is if there was a problem, and so far there have been none.”

  “Wallace is from Brighton?” Clara asked.

  “Yes, I believe so,” Dr Browning nodded. “He has been staying at his own home while we are here.”

  “Are any of the other members of the exhibition crew local?”

  “To Brighton?” Dr Browning wrinkled his forehead. “No, only Wallace.”

  Clara filed away that piece of information for later. She took a look around the room and noted that the only other person present was an older gentleman studying the cases near the main doors. There was no one to overhear her next words to the academic.

  “Dr Browning, I have been made aware of an incident that happened to you in Germany many years ago. It seems that incident was almost identical to what happened here the other night.”

  Dr Browning looked startled, he had to grab a handkerchief from his pocket and wipe his forehead where a cold sweat had formed.

  “Oh,” he groaned and held the handkerchief to his mouth as if he felt unwell. “I hoped to never hear about that terrible night again.”

  “I am curious that the police do not appear to be aware of it,” Clara pointed out.

  “It happened in Germany in 1901,” Dr Browning said solemnly. “No charges were pressed against me, nothing was ever mentioned in the British press. No one knows about it, I thought it was all forgotten.”

  Dr Browning hung his head forward. He looked worn out, a tired old soul who could go on no longer.

  “Clearly someone has not forgotten,” he said in a voice that was barely above a whisper. “I’ve never told anyone. Even my superiors at the Natural History Museum are unaware. I do not have a criminal past, if someone has implied that…”

  “Dr Browning, the events that happened here the other night are startlingly similar to the events that occurred in Germany in 1901. You can’t be blind to that?”

  Dr Browning clutched the handkerchief in his hands and let out a little sob.

  “Miss Fitzgerald, I feel very unwell,” he said weakly. “Would you kindly help me onto my camp bed?”

  Clara wondered if the man was trying to play the poor academic, a martyr to his nerves, yet again. However, she could not deny that he looked quite sick and seemed fit to fall from his chair. She glanced around and spotted the camp bed tucked up a corner. She fetched it and unfolded it before the Archaeopteryx display case. The town hall was now empty and the porter at the door was beginning to rattle his keys and contemplate locking the doors for the day.

  Clara helped Dr Browning to lay down on the camp bed. There was no pillow that she could see, but he didn’t complain. He just looked relieved to be resting at last. Clara pressed a hand to his forehead and discovered he was feverish. She felt for his pulse and it was racing. Even the most creative of actors could not fake those symptoms. Dr Browning was genuinely sick.

  Clara stood up and found the porter in the little foyer outside the main room. He went to hold the front door open for her and she raised her hand to pause him.

  “I think Dr Browning needs a doctor. He seems very unwell.”

  The porter looked surprised. He stepped to the doors of the main room and it took him a moment to spot Dr Browning laid out on the camp bed. The man had shut his eyes and seemed to have fallen into a deep sleep. The porter glanced back at Clara, clearly baffled by the turn of events.

  “Sooner rather than later, might be good,” Clara prodded him. “I’ll keep an eye on him while you fetch help.”

  “Miss, I can’t leave you here alone.”

  Clara rolled her eyes.

  “Fine, I shall fetch help, but you need to watch him closely, make sure he keeps breathing. Do you know what to do if he stops?”

  The porter looked panicked.

  “Well, you have a choice,” Clara said. “Either fetch a doctor or play nurse to Dr Browning. Personally, I have nursing experience and know what I am doing around a man in a fever. I think Dr Browning’s condition is quite serious and he needs to be monitored until the doctor arrives. Else, he may very well slip away. Do you understand?”

  The porter had his mouth hanging open, as if he had just been told the king had popped by to say hello. He had to shake off his confusion and make a decision.

  “I’ll fetch a doctor,” he told Clara. “You stay here, but don’t touch anything.”

  Clara was offended, but the porter was already disappearing out the front doors. She went back to Dr Browning and sat by his side. He was taking shallow breaths and his cheeks had taken on an unhealthy flush.

  “Oh dear, Dr Browning,” Clara picked up his hand and continued to feel for his pulse. “What a mess this all is.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Dr Browning was taken to hospital. Clara had suspected that would be the case; the doctor who had been fetched feared the fever was a sign of a serious underlying illness. For the time being, Clara could not interrogate the academic further about the incident in Germany. She went home and had tea with Annie and Tommy, before turning out again to find Harry’s foreman and at least resolving one aspect of this case.

  It was just after eight when she arrived at the train station and she was in time to see the 8.05 leave the platform. Clara had always had a fondness for trains; the big engines seemed to have a personality that belied the fact they were merely machines of steel and steam. It did not take her long to find Mr Turnbull. He was dealing with a problematic drain that led off the platform. It had become clogged and was producing a foul smell. Several of his workmen were stood around it, poking and prodding into the gloom of the drain with iron rods. Mr Turnbull stood back a pace watching, a handkerchief pressed to his nose to try and eliminate the smell.

  Clara was just about to speak to him when the odour from the blocked drain struck her and she gagged. Coughing hard into her hand she found her eyes streaming and her voice gone. Mr Turnbull glanced in her direction and hastily ushered her away.

  “Sorry miss, should have put a board up to stop the public coming that way,” he apologised, though he looked annoyed.

  “Actually…” Clara coughed, and the words slowly came back. “Actually, I was hoping to speak to you, Mr Turnbull.”

  Mr Turnbull was surprised. He was a short man in his fifties, with wiry grey hair and the lean, but powerful physique of a man who has done manual labour all his life. He was wearing a pair of brown overalls over his shirt and trousers. They were clean and had been recently ironed, marking him out from the other men in his charge, whose overalls were dirty and crumpled.

  “Why would you want to talk to me?” Mr Turnbull asked.

  “It’s about Harry Beasley,” Clara explained, wiping tears from her eyes. “I hoped you could help me.”

  Mr Turnbull glanced over at his workers, plodding on with the drain blockage.

  “I’ll be back shortly lads!” He called to them, before turning back to Clara. “Let’s talk somewhere quiet.”

  Mr Turnbull showed her into the workers’ locker room, where Harry’s locker stood with its door ajar. So much w
oe had been caused because of the contents of that locker.

  “I was shocked when Harry was arrested,” Mr Turnbull said, his own eyes wandering to the locker. “And when they found that mallet…”

  He was too appalled by it all to finish the statement.

  “Harry says the blood and hair on the mallet was from a rat he struck,” Clara told Mr Turnbull. “The police surgeon has confirmed the hair on it is from a rodent. He can’t, unfortunately, say if the blood is human or animal.”

  “We do have a rat problem,” Mr Turnbull shrugged his shoulders. “There are always food scraps about the line. People drop half-eaten sandwiches and apples, or stuff rolls out of crates when the goods trains are being loaded. It’s a paradise for rats. We tried keeping a cat or two, but they were prone to crossing the train tracks at inopportune moments.”

  Clara winced at the thought.

  “The lads will take a swing at a rat if they see one. We all do it. They are such a pain and they can spread nasty diseases. A couple of years ago one of the workmen became really sick, nearly died, and the hospital said it was something he caught from a rat. The stationmaster told us to deal with the problem, clear them out, but he didn’t actually give us anything to sort them with,” Mr Turnbull snorted at the idiocy of his employers. “We’ve tried all the usual poisons, but the rats get clever and seem to know which is the poisoned bait. In any case, there are just so many of them.”

  “Then, what Harry says is completely feasible? That he was nearly due to go home, saw a rat and took a swing at it, then left his mallet to clean up the next day?”

  “Crikey, I think if you looked at every fellow’s mallet you would find the same!” Mr Turnbull replied. “It is completely feasible. I would be surprised if you found a mallet here that did not have a bit of rat blood on it. I started to give the chaps a shilling every time they smacked a rat and brought me the body, but it was getting too expensive!”

  “Harry says he was working on repairing a piece of track that had buckled when his brother-in-law was murdered.”

  Mr Turnbull nodded.

  “We had quite an issue with that section of track. Had to have a whole new length made, then closed off that portion overnight and replaced it. What a nightmare,” Mr Turnbull whistled at the memory. “We were told we had to have the track repaired by morning, as they wanted to reopen the line. It was all hands to the deck to deal with it. Only just had it done when dawn came up. I do wonder at the people who come up with these ideas, they seem to think it is so easy to do these things.”

  “Then Harry was working on that track all night?”

  “Harry and all the men,” Mr Turnbull agreed, then he looked abashed. “Should I have told the police that? I didn’t think. I only heard about Harry being arrested when I came to work last night, and I didn’t give it a lot of thought. I was surprised, mind, never considered Harry the sort to get in trouble with the police.”

  “And you are certain that around midnight on Monday night Harry was working on that piece of track?”

  “Oh yes,” Mr Turnbull insisted. “I was there. He never left until we were done.”

  “Mr Turnbull, I need you to come with me to the police station at once to tell them this.”

  Mr Turnbull looked alarmed.

  “I can’t just leave work! I’ll be in trouble for that!”

  “Not as much trouble as Harry Beasley is in right now,” Clara persisted. “I shall speak to the stationmaster on your behalf.”

  Mr Turnbull was grim-faced, but he did agree to go with Clara. They found the stationmaster and Clara made it plain that she was the one insisting that Mr Turnbull go with her to speak to the police and help poor Harry Beasley. Clara could be very persuasive when she needed to be, and the stationmaster did not make a fuss. She wasted no time in escorting Mr Turnbull to Inspector Park-Coombs. The Inspector was putting in a lot of late nights working on the case, and he was not entirely delighted to see his only suspect walk free from his cells, but once he had listened to Mr Turnbull, he could not keep Harry any longer. It was obvious the man was innocent and the Earl of Rendham would have to lump it.

  Mr Turnbull returned to work, though not before telling Harry he would be delighted to see him back at the station the following night. Clara walked with Harry back to his house. He could not stop thanking her for helping him and he was almost overcome by emotion. He had started to envision a noose about his neck.

  Emma Beasley was elated to see her husband, and insisted Clara come in and at least have a cup of tea for all she had done. Emma ended up cooking tiny thick pancakes, which she served to Clara with homemade jam, all the time having to dab her eyes to keep tears of delight from falling down her cheeks.

  “I think you saved my life Miss Fitzgerald,” Harry Beasley said, enjoying the pancakes his wife had made. He ate like a man who has been starved for days. “I really thought I was doomed.”

  “But you did not kill John,” Clara reminded him. “Truth always comes out in the end.”

  “Are you any closer to knowing who did kill him?” Emma asked, her voice tight with emotion. “Ruby woke up this afternoon and asked for him. I didn’t know what to say. I said he was not here.”

  Emma trembled with the sadness of it all. Harry reached out and clasped her hand. Clara was so glad she had reunited the pair; they clearly meant all the world to each other. She wanted to smile at seeing them together but realised it would be inappropriate.

  “I am slowly unravelling this mystery,” Clara told them, and then she recalled something she had been meaning to ask them for a while. “I was wondering if you ever heard of a man called Wallace Sunderland?”

  Emma shook her head, it was not a name she knew. Harry was frowning.

  “There was a Wallace in our school,” he said. “I went to the same school as John, but I was two years above him. I’m pretty certain there was a boy named Wallace, can’t recall his surname. You don’t really pay attention to those things as a kid.”

  “I went to a different school,” Emma shrugged. “I’m sorry I can’t help you. But maybe Ruby would remember something?”

  Harry looked sceptical.

  “I don’t think we should disturb her,” he said.

  “I think she would like to help, if she could. We might have had little time for John, but she adored him,” Emma sighed. “I don’t understand it myself. He was a brute, but Ruby would have died for him. I think she is strong enough to talk for just a little while.”

  “I wouldn’t want to do anything that might upset her or make her unwell,” Clara insisted, feeling anxious any questions might make Ruby’s already fragile health worse. If Ruby had forgotten her husband had died, Clara was not sure she wanted to disabuse her of that fiction, not when her own time on this earth was likely short.

  “She doesn’t need to know that Harry is dead,” Emma said. “You think this man Wallace was involved in John’s death?”

  Clara picked her words carefully.

  “I think there is a fair chance, only, I can’t see a motive for him killing John just yet.”

  “John made enemies like other men make friends,” Harry snorted. “You never knew him alive. He borrowed money and favours, then pretended he knew nothing about either. He had men hammering on his door demanding he repay his debts. He was a lousy drunk, who picked fights and had a nasty tongue. If he didn’t use you, or punch you, he certainly insulted you. I can’t fathom how anyone can be sorry he is gone.”

  Clara thought of the three men they had met in the pub, who had seemed genuinely saddened by the news John had been killed. Friendship was a complicated business, she concluded.

  “John asked someone to assist him to break into the town hall the night he died, someone who was an old friend and who was connected with the exhibition. Wallace Sunderland fits part of that description, but I don’t know as yet whether he was friends with John. If he was not, then maybe there is someone else I have not even heard the name of yet.”

 
“You must speak to Ruby,” Emma replied. “She is the only person who might know.”

  “Ruby was in the same class as John,” Harry said, looking as though that was the worst thing possible. “If the boy called Wallace is the same as this man you are investigating, Ruby should know. I guess you best speak to her.”

  Emma reached out and clasped his hand, giving him a gentle smile.

  “She would want to help,” she said softly.

  Harry just dropped his head and gave a deep sigh.

  Emma took Clara upstairs to the bedroom where Ruby was resting. There was a bit more colour to Ruby’s face, but she still looked gaunt. Her hands rested on top of the blanket, the bones of her knuckles and finger joints prominent.

  “Ruby?” Emma went to her sister-in-law’s side and gently touch her cheek. “Ruby, are you awake?”

  Ruby’s eyelids fluttered, she took a deep breath which ended in a rattle, and then looked up at Emma.

  “I’m awake,” she said weakly.

  “This is Clara,” Emma motioned to Clara and Ruby tilted her head a fraction. “She has a question for you. It might help John.”

  “John,” the words were almost silent as they slipped from Ruby’s mouth, it was more the motion of her lips that told the women what she had said. “Is he all right?”

  “He’s in a bit of bother,” Emma said lightly. “That’s why Clara needs to ask you a question.”

  Ruby’s head rolled back on the pillow and she slowly licked her dry lips and gave a slight cough.

  “What’s the question?” She asked.

  “Have you ever heard John mention the name Wallace Sunderland?” Clara asked her.

  Ruby’s lips curled into a smile, she gave a hoarse laugh.

  “Wallace…” she let the name slip away. “Wallace and John were thick as thieves, before he left to serve in the war.”

  “Have you seen him with John recently? Has he mentioned him?” Clara tried not to press the woman too hard, but she was suddenly excited, seeing a possible solution to the case coming into focus.

  “He… came over the other day… had fish and chips with… us,” Ruby took a shuddering breath. “Little Wally. Done all right for himself. Got a job. Got a wife.”