by L. A. Nisula
“Arrested? I thought that inspector seemed like the sort who’d arrest anybody. But I wasn’t here all afternoon, and when I got back, I was in the kitchen the whole time.”
She was so insistent on her schedule that I had the feeling there was something else, some bit she didn’t want me to notice, but I couldn’t figure out what it was, and if she was hiding it, she wasn’t likely to tell me no matter how I asked. “If you think of anything else, please let me know.”
“Of course, miss, and I hope you get your cousin sorted out.”
“Thank you.” I went back upstairs.
Mrs. Fetherton was waiting for me in the front hall. “Was Nora helpful?”
I certainly didn’t want to get her in trouble, so I said, “She tried to be, but she wasn’t home so there wasn’t much she could say. Still, eliminating someone is always a start.”
Mrs. Fetherton nodded. “I’m sure Scotland Yard is doing their best.”
“I’m sure they are. And I’ll speak to my friend about coming to look at the window. I’ll tell her to come quickly so you don’t have to worry about anyone else breaking in.” Really so Mrs. Fetherton wouldn’t change her mind, but that didn’t sound as polite. I started towards the door so she would see she was getting rid of me.
“Very kind of you, I’m sure. But if she can’t manage...”
“I’m certain she’ll try. She’d hate to know you and Nora were all alone in this house with a bad lock on the window that a criminal already knew about. Good evening.” I hurried out the door before she could object again to Kate coming.
I knew I needed to strike while the iron was hot, or at least get Kate to Mrs. Fetherton’s while Mrs. Fetherton was willing. In spite of getting permission for Kate to examine the lock, it didn’t seem like my day had been as helpful to Milly as I could have hoped. While I looked for a cab, I considered what else I could look into. Nora’s story of the tea shop matched what she’d told Inspector Wainwright, but it still seemed odd, and I still couldn’t understand why Mrs. Fetherton would send her there. And odd was always a good place to start looking. I glanced at my watch. It was still early, in fact about the time I had visited the day before. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. It was about the time Nora would have been dining there, but it also meant the same staff—and the same maître d’—were most likely there as well. I didn’t think I’d have much luck finding a Miss Smythe, but “Fetherton” was an unusual name, and Mrs. Fetherton would hardly be sending Nora someplace she hadn’t visited herself. If I could verify that Mrs. Fetherton had been there, it would support Nora’s story and give me one less person to look into. Then perhaps I could stop obsessing over Nora’s alibi and start coming up with somewhere useful to look. And perhaps that would trigger someone’s memory there. It was worth trying, at least. I turned towards the Underground station.
Chapter 10
THE DELPHIE LOOKED the same as it had the day before. The same maître d’ saw me approach and tried to convince me that I did not wish to disturb him by glaring as fiercely as he could manage. As Inspector Wainwright had tried something similar on several occasions, I was somewhat immune to the effort and walked right up to him.
“I am afraid we are all booked for the afternoon.”
I glanced around at the empty tables. “Then it’s a pity so many of them didn’t manage to arrive. Perhaps the police scared them away. It does happen. But I’ll be certain to mention that to anyone I see outside.”
He glared again but didn’t try to force me out.
I doubted I’d be able to talk to the staff, but perhaps I could verify Mrs. Fetherton’s presence. It would be something at least. “I won’t linger. I only wanted to know how often Mrs. Fetherton has tea here.”
“That’s all?”
“And then I’ll leave. No bothering your staff, or mentioning murder or rats.”
The last convinced him. He glanced through his book, going all the way back to the beginning. “She doesn’t.”
“What?”
“The person you are looking for does not have tea here. I have no record of a Mrs. Fetherton ever having a reservation here.”
I looked at the book in front of him. It was quite thick, easily over a thousand pages. “How far back do the records go?”
“It covers the last three years.”
“So she could have come here before that.” Although why would she send Nora to a place she hadn’t been to in over three years?
“She could have, but we were under different management.”
“But it was still a tea shop?”
He paused. “The focus was on desserts. An attempt to recreate the Gunters of old, I believe. It did not succeed in that.”
“I suppose that could have been the place she was familiar with. Thank you.”
I could feel him watching me as I left, most likely to be sure I wasn’t coming back. The whole incident with the Delphie was still odd, but I was no further along than I had been. Perhaps I’d have more luck with the window. I found a cab and gave the driver the address for Kate Ferris’s shop in Mayfair.
~*~*~
Kate’s shop was the same as ever. Ada was behind the counter gathering an order for a girl who looked like a lady’s maid sent on an errand. Ada looked up when she heard the small bell on the door chime and, seeing it was me, smiled and nodded in the direction of the back room without turning away from the order she was preparing. I glanced at the counter as I passed and noticed she’d gathered six kinds of gears, a small spanner, two packets of small sprockets, and three balls of a very nice shade of bottle-green yarn.
Kate was in the storeroom poking through boxes. “Have you seen the new gyroscopes? Oh, hello, Cassie. I thought it was Ada. Social call, or are you stumbling over bodies again?”
“This time it was Milly and her latest gentleman doing the stumbling.”
“Not certain I want to hear about it, then. Could I interest you in the story behind a steam-driven dumbwaiter?” She paused for a beat in case I was going to accept then grinned. “Milly didn’t do it, did she?”
“I’d be very disappointed in her if she did, although she has confessed and been arrested, but I do think that was so I would investigate and point somewhere away from Randall.”
“I take it that’s the new gentleman? Well, you’d best tell me about it.” She settled in against the work table and waited for my tale.
I leaned against the nearest counter that wasn’t covered in bits of metal and yarn. “I don’t know much yet, beyond the fact that the victim was also stepping out with Randall Fetherton.”
“Is he a suspect?”
“Everyone is a suspect at this point. They invited me to go with them to meet his mother, which I’m fairly certain was a way to distract her if things started to go pear-shaped.” I told her everything I could think of about the night we found the body.
“So she was murdered on the spot?”
“It seems so, but now that you mention it, I don’t know that strangling would show much damage to the area, not like a stabbing, so perhaps she was killed elsewhere and the body left, but there was one set of footprints outside, small and clearly a woman’s, so how would the killer have gotten the body there?”
“And the police case?”
“No idea, I’m afraid. Inspector Wainwright is in charge.”
Kate rolled her eyes. “You always seem to ask for my help when Wainwright’s the detective.”
I was going to protest, but she was correct. “I suppose I do. I’ll try to find a case with Inspector Burrows that I need help on next time.”
Kate shook her head. “It’s not really your fault. It’s Stevenson.”
“Stevenson?”
“He’s the tinkerer Scotland Yard usually uses. He can’t stand Wainwright, so I think he rushes through any case involving him. That leaves plenty for me to find. So what is it I’m looking at?”
“A window lock. It seems secure, but someone got it open, and I don’t thi
nk the victim would have been capable of disabling it.”
“Can you describe the lock?”
“It looks like a variation of the clock-based locks that you put Mrs. Albright’s ground-floor windows. Two sets of gears, and I think a randomizer in the second mechanism.”
“It could be interesting. And even if it isn’t, you know I’ll help you out. Although it will be quite awkward if Milly did do it. When would you like me to come?”
“As soon as you can. I’m not sure how long Mrs. Fetherton will let me through the front door.”
“I can see how Inspector Wainwright could sour a person on criminal investigations. Then it had better be tomorrow. I could come before lunch. It’s always slow then, so Ada could keep an eye on things with the new shopgirl.”
“And how is she working out?”
“Much better than the last. She can keep the wool and the gears straight at the same time, which is quite a help.”
We arranged to meet the next morning on the high street near Mrs. Fetherton’s then chatted about Kate’s shop for a little while, and I ended up leaving with several ounces of wool in three shades of green and a kit for a clockwork drawer alarm.
When I returned to Paddington Street after sending a note to Mrs. Fetherton so she wouldn’t think I was as rude as her son about visiting, Mrs. Albright was in the front hallway sorting through the evening post. She looked up when she heard the door. “I take it from your expression that Milly is still in trouble?”
“Considering she confessed to the murder, there really wasn’t much Inspector Wainwright could do but arrest her.”
Mrs. Albright dropped the last of the mail into the correct baskets. “Come to my flat and we’ll have tea. The kettle’s on, and I still have some of the almond cake.”
Tea sounded like exactly what I needed, so I followed Mrs. Albright into her sitting room and left my parcels on her couch. While we got the tea sorted and laid out on the table, I told her about my day of investigating, starting with Inspector Wainwright’s office and ending with Kate’s promise of assistance.
Mrs. Albright nodded when I’d finished. “The Delphie does seem to be an odd choice. I remember the old place. It wasn’t somewhere I would have thought to send a maid for refinement. The ices were bland and the service was terrible. The pastry was fine, but not enough to make up for the rest.”
I accepted a slice of almond cake. “Then Mrs. Fetherton must have been thinking of the current shop, if she was thinking of it at all.”
“You think she chose it at random? But why would she send her maid to an expensive tea room to teach her refinement if she hadn’t seen the place?”
“Exactly.” We ate in silence for a few minutes while I thought. “I suppose she may have gone without a prior reservation. The place was half empty both times when I went there. Maybe that wouldn’t have been noted in the book. I wonder how I could check that.”
“You could simply ask.”
I grinned. “The maître d’ is starting to look at me the same way Inspector Wainwright does.”
Mrs. Albright smiled. “As bad as that? Well, I haven’t been out for tea in far too long. If you haven’t found anything out, perhaps I’ll go by there tomorrow afternoon and see if there are any tables available. You can add the cost to whatever you charge Inspector Wainwright for typing.”
I grinned. “That might help. At least I’d know if it was a possibility.” I gathered up my parcels and, after a few pleasantries, went up to my flat.
~*~*~
The next morning, I left early for Rusham Street. If Kate got there before she’d thought she would, I didn’t want her to waste time waiting for me when she could be minding their shop. Besides, someone on the high street might have seen something that afternoon. That was where I turned my steps when I arrived.
There weren’t many people out and about. A pair of maids who seemed to have been sent on some errand, a mother with her son who seemed to think he had to climb on absolutely every obstacle in his path, be it a wall, a postbox, or a tree, and a messenger boy running away from Rusham Street with three paper-wrapped parcels. None of them seemed to be regulars, not that people who were regulars in the morning would be of much help. I needed people who frequented the street in the afternoon.
That left the shops. The best chance to have seen something seemed to be the chemist’s. It was diagonally across the street from the block number 24 was on, so most likely to have a view of that part of the street, and it had a large window in front that wasn’t overly crowded with displays of merchandise. It was worth trying.
When I entered, the shop was empty except for the mother and her son, who were getting something from the counter, and the two ladies who seemed to work there. I waited by a rack of soaps for the mother to finish her transaction and watched the boy as he tried sitting patiently on the bench across from the door. He seemed to be attempting to find out how much he could fidget before it wasn’t considered sitting any longer. When the pair had left, the lady at the counter turned to me. “Hello, miss. I’m Mrs. Perkins. How can I help you?”
As Perkins was the name on the sign, I assumed the shop was hers. “I know the people at 24 Rusham Street.”
“Oh dear, that was such a tragedy. Do they know who did it?”
“At the moment, they suspect my cousin.”
“Gracious,” the other woman, who I took to be the sales clerk, said.
“She had nothing to do with it, of course.”
“Of course,” Mrs. Perkins said quickly.
“Why do I think Randall Fetherton was involved with it,” the clerk said tartly.
“Now, Martha, just because he didn’t tell you about Miss Humphries doesn’t mean he’s involved in murder.”
So Randall had quite a list of ladies he’d lied to. Somehow I wasn’t surprised. “I thought maybe the pair of you had seen something that day that might help my cousin.”
Both women paused, and I could tell they were trying to think of something that might be useful. Martha shook her head first. “It’s not to say that something might not have been going on then, but around supper time, when people are going home from their offices, is when we are busy.”
Mrs. Perkins nodded. “People stop in on the way home to pick up prescriptions or get something they forgot they needed on the way home. We don’t really have time to look out the window then.”
I’d known it hadn’t been likely. “I quite understand, and I believe everyone was out of the house when the murder happened.”
Mrs. Perkins looked ready to answer when the mother who’d just left hurried back into the shop. “Do you have any bandages handy? Samuel fell again.”
Martha went to the shelves. “What was it this time?”
“He tried climbing the lamppost. It didn’t go well.”
Mrs. Perkins leaned across the counter. “I take it he’s not badly hurt?”
“I have Constable Declan making certain he doesn’t try it again, but it’s his nose, and they do bleed so.”
“They do indeed. You remember the other day?” Martha came out from among the shelves with what seemed to be enough bandages for a small regiment. “I’ll come with you so Constable Declan can get back to his rounds.”
As they left, I turned to Mrs. Perkins. “Do you need to assist?”
“What? With Sammy? Oh no, they’re more than capable. The hard part is keeping him in one place while they tend to him.”
“It did seem like quite a quantity of bandages.”
“You don’t need to worry about Sammy Parker. Yesterday he fell from the wall around the pub. Last week it was the tree by the bakery. And the iron gate around the post office. And the top of Mr. Clarkin’s garden wall.”
It seemed as if Sammy was very good at falling, although less good at climbing. It also seemed I was free to ask about the other comment that had caught my attention. “You said something happened the other day?”
“What? Oh, the broken nose. Yes. Come to think of
it, it was the day of the murder. That was Wednesday, wasn’t it? But that was before the murder.”
I wondered how she knew when the murder had taken place, or if she was making a guess. “How long before the murder?”
“Oh, hours before the police arrived.”
She seemed dismissive of the whole thing, but hours before the police arrived sounded like just the time I was interested in. “Could you tell me what happened?”
Mrs. Perkins leaned against the counter. “Of course, but I’m afraid it’s not as interesting as I made it sound. It was around two, when there’s no one around and no customers, so Martha and I were standing by the window having some tea and commenting on the morning’s customers when the cab stopped by the corner of Rusham. We didn’t think anything of it except that it was so quiet on the street, and it was the only thing to talk about. Two men got out. One paid the driver while his friend waited, and then the driver said something to him. Tempers flared. They started yelling at each other. We couldn’t hear anything until Martha opened the door, and then all we heard was the man saying, ‘So you think I’m a liar?’ and the driver saying, ‘So you think I’m a fool?’ And then the driver hopped down and punched the shorter man right in the face. The man’s friend ran over and handed the driver some money, and that seemed to satisfy him, and he left. But the second man was bleeding something awful from his nose. We were expecting him to come in and get something for it, but the pair of them just went on their way. Martha was going to run out and offer to help—really, the friend was doing his best to stop the bleeding but his hands were filthy; I could see the dirt from here. It was hardly hygienic, but they walked away before Martha or I could grab anything to take out to them.”
I couldn’t quite see what a fight with a cabbie over the fare had to do with anything, but since I had a witness to it, it seemed worth getting all the details. “Did you see where they went?”