Three Bodies in London

by L. A. Nisula

  “Don’t worry about that. I’ll come by and check on you when I’ve finished.”

  So that had been the right thing to say. “Thank you.” I sat at the desk and began going through the books. They were pretty straightforward. Mr. Hilliard received an income from an annuity and a few investments. There were a few other deposits which I assumed were related to the store, but they were small. There were also quite a lot of expenses. Some I could see being related to his house, but there were quite a few that made no sense, and some of those seemed rather large to me. I really should have done a better job learning to convert the money in my head. Just going between pounds and guineas was confusing me. One thing I did not see was the rent for the room in Portland Road. But if he was trying to keep that a secret, would he tell his accountants about it? Particularly as they also worked for the rest of the family? And did that mean he might have other accountants somewhere? But that would mean he’d have to have significantly more money than what I was seeing in his accounts. It didn’t make any sense.

  “Are you finding anything?”

  I hated to disappoint Jimmy, but I didn’t think this was the kind of confusion he could help me with. “I’m afraid not. He wasn’t very good at business, but I already knew that.”

  “Maybe there’s something you don’t understand. I could take a look.”

  I didn’t think he meant to be condescending, so I picked a confusing line at random. “He seems to have a lot of losses listed like this. And one of them seems to be in a different hand than anything else in the box.” I poked around until I found the one with the oddly slanted writing. “Can you tell me anything about it?”

  I assumed it had been written by some sort of temp or a former employee, so I was surprised when Jimmy studied it for a moment then said, “That’s Mr. Beauregard’s handwriting.”

  “Why would something of Mr. Beauregard’s be in Mr. Reginald’s box?”

  “I have no idea. We have lots of accounts for people in the same families, and we’re very careful about keeping everyone’s accounts completely separate. One of the clerks must have put something in the wrong box.” Jimmy picked up the rest of the file and looked through the papers. “No, here’s the slip that went with it. That’s Mr. Reginald’s account number. So this was definitely sent to be paid from Mr. Reginald’s account.” He shrugged. “Perhaps Mr. Beauregard was helping him with his accounts?”

  “That could be it. Is it Mr. Beauregard’s handwriting on the slip?”

  “It’s typed. Mr. Reginald frequently types things.”

  I wondered why. His handwriting didn’t look bad. Perhaps he had a new typewriter and wanted to play with it. I put the slip back in the box and kept looking. There were several more slips that were similar to the one with Mr. Beauregard’s handwriting, only they were all typed. Most only had an address where the money was to be paid, but a few of them also had names on them. Mostly one name. I poked through the box looking for anything with the same dates as the slips which might tell me what they were. When I couldn’t find anything, I asked, “Jimmy, who is Harvey Wallace?”

  “Harvey Wallace?”

  “There are at least seven notes, or I suppose they’re receipts, all with his name on them.”

  Jimmy came and took the slips of paper from me. “Those are notes, miss. Gambling notes. Harvey Wallace is a bookmaker.”

  “A bookmaker? So someone was placing bets?”

  “It seems so, miss.”

  I pulled out the note with Beauregard’s handwriting. The address was the same. I held it out to Jimmy. “Can you tell anything about the bets from these slips?”

  We both stared at the notes and entries, but we couldn’t make sense of it. “I’m sorry, miss. The best I can do is give you the name. Glenn and Shaw in Blackfriars. That’s a betting parlor, but I don’t know anything else about it.”

  I tried to think of something to ask him that he could answer. “When was the last time Mr. Reginald was here?”

  “I can find out. Give me a minute to check the schedule.” He hurried to the front desk and returned with a calendar. “He was supposed to come here next week to see Mr. Lennox. The last meeting before that was three months ago.”

  An appointment a week after his murder seemed interesting at least. “Can you tell from the notation why he was coming here?”

  Jimmy looked at the calendar. “Only that he was meeting Mr. Lennox, but I can try to find out.”

  “I don’t want to put you to any trouble.” I was starting to feel guilty about using him to get information.

  “No trouble at all. I hope I’ve been of some small help.” I could tell that was something he’d read in one of his books.

  “It’s more than I had when I came here, so that seems to be progress.” I wasn’t sure that it was, but I didn’t want Jimmy to feel his first case had been unsolved.

  “If you think of any other accounting questions you might have...”

  “I’ll know where to look. Thank you for all your help.”

  Jimmy walked me to the door quite properly and locked up behind me. At least I had a little more information. Perhaps something would come to me in the night.

  The next morning, I was at a loss for how to continue investigating. There seemed to be plenty of clues pointing away from Milly, but none of them pointed to anything else. After breakfast, I went to Scotland Yard to try and see her, only to be told after waiting in several lines that it was Inspector Peterson’s day off so there was no one to give me special permission, and I ought to return on Friday. As I was leaving, I remembered Mr. Beauregard’s housekeeper, Mrs. Ruddock, saying the funeral would be today. Perhaps there would be some clue in the reactions of the people there. It would give me something to try, at any rate. I went back to the apartment and dug through my suitcases until I found something that would do for a funeral, then set out for Bloomsbury.

  When I arrived at the Bloomsbury house, Mrs. Ruddock gave me a curious look as I entered the parlor, but she didn’t say anything as I handed her my coat. I avoided the receiving line and went straight to the teacart. With something in my hands, I looked like I belonged. I found a nice corner by a potted plant where I could watch the room without attracting attention.

  Mr. Beauregard had positioned himself at the head of the room, accepting condolences from guests as they came in. There was an old man sitting at the table beside him, studying a ledger book laying open on the table. At first, I thought he was someone from the funeral parlor noting guests, but then I got a look at the book. It was definitely a ledger book, the sort used for accounting.

  “That’s Mr. Horatio Hilliard,” Mrs. Ruddock leaned over the table beside me pretending to adjust something. “The father.”

  “What is he doing?”

  “He had a meeting with his solicitor this morning. He’s prepared in case he comes to pay his respects.”

  “He’ll discuss business with his solicitor at a wake?”

  “He didn’t let their births disrupt business, so why should their death?” She scanned the room. “That’s him.” She nodded to a small man who had just entered and was trying to make himself as unobtrusive as possible.

  “Do you know what the meeting’s about?”

  She picked up the discarded plates and shook her head. I inclined my head to let her know I understood she couldn’t talk now. She moved on to the next table.

  I made my way to a window behind the Hilliards’ table and tried to look like I was staring at the lawn contemplating the briefness of life or something similarly mournful. There was a spot on the glass in front of a large tree trunk which was dark enough to reflect the room. I moved until it reflected Mr. Horatio Hilliard and his ledger.

  Mr. Hilliard tapped his pen on the page of his ledger book. “You brought the deeds?”

  “I’m not sure this is the place,” the solicitor murmured. He received a glare in response that made him shrug and handed over a folder. Mr. Horatio Hilliard opened it and looked through the
papers.

  “I see you were paid for the property on Bayswater as well.”

  “That was for rent, not purchase.”

  “Ninety pounds for rent?”

  “You are clearly not familiar with the property in question.”

  “You accuse me of not knowing my business?” Mr. Horatio Hilliard’s voice rose as he spoke. Most of the room turned towards him. He swept the papers into the folder and continued in a lower voice. “I will review the accounts, but I expect to receive the deed promptly. Sloppy paperwork will not be acceptable.” He closed the folder and placed it under the ledger. The solicitor slipped away, still with the air of trying not to be noticed. If that was the normal reception he received in the house, I wasn’t surprised by that.

  I kept watching Mr. Horatio Hilliard in the window reflection, hoping for something useful. He kept the ledger book open in front of him. So that wasn’t his only business meeting today. I considered watching to see who else he met with, but a young man was crossing the room and trying to catch my eye. I didn’t know him, and I didn’t want to waste my energy trying to lie to him when I ought to be investigating, so I focused on the back of some stranger’s head as if I had just seen someone I had to talk to and crossed the room.

  I found another plant in a convenient corner and leaned against the wall.

  Mrs. Ruddock was still roaming the edges of the room, checking the tea urns and dishes of sandwiches. I saw Miss Hopkins from the shop arrive with the store manager. They went to the coffin and paused, then went to Mr. Beauregard and spoke a few words. He seemed remotely polite. They paused at Mr. Horatio Hilliard’s table, but he barely acknowledged their presence and they walked away towards the refreshments.

  I kept an eye on the receiving line, looking for anyone who looked—I wasn’t sure what. Different, I supposed.

  Three men, clearly business acquaintances, came next. They were polite but not upset. They walked right past Mr. Horatio Hilliard’s table, followed by a scrawny man with far too much oil in his hair and a cheap suit that was being spoiled by it. The last man put a hand on Mr. Beauregard’s arm and steered him away from the table. It was all very subtle, but I could tell Mr. Beauregard was only going with him to avoid a scene, and from the look on the man’s face, he was preparing to have one, either in the garden or right there in the middle of the wake. I lost sight of them as they left through a side door, so I turned my attention back to the rest of the room.

  I was beginning to understand what Mrs. Ruddock had meant. Mr. Hilliard had been a nice, inoffensive man with plenty of acquaintances and no real friends, no one with enough emotion to kill him. I seemed to be at a dead end. Probably not the best phrasing for a funeral, but true. There didn’t seem to be anything more to learn there, so I drifted towards the door, trying not to be obvious about it. Once I was outside, there was the question of where to go next.

  Jimmy had mentioned bets and a bookie. That sounded promising. Maybe that’s what his death was connected to. It couldn’t hurt to check it out. And now was probably an excellent time as it was late enough in the day for something like a betting parlor to be open, but still early enough that it wouldn’t be crowded, no one would have had enough time to get really drunk, and it was still light outside. And if I waited too long, I’d probably lose my nerve.

  ~ * ~ * ~

  I found a listing for the Glenn and Shaw in a directory of London easily enough, so it wasn’t any sort of an illegal betting parlor, at least not outwardly. It wasn’t far from Mr. Reginald’s shop in Mayfair, so it probably had money to pay any bribes it needed to and ought to be perfectly safe to visit in the middle of the afternoon. And it was certainly convenient for him if he slipped out during lunch to place a few bets. And since I was close to the shop, I thought I’d stop by and see if Miss Hopkins had come up with any new ideas about Mr. Hilliard’s tinkering projects.

  When I got to the shop, it was as empty as it normally was. Emptier, I realized, as Miss Hopkins didn’t seem to be there, only Miss Shepherd, who was trying to adjust something on the counter and seemed to be having trouble with it. I considered walking out, but Miss Shepherd had already seen me enter.

  “Can I help you, miss, or would you rather look around first?”

  “I was looking for Miss Hopkins. Is she in?”

  “She has the day off. I’m the store manager. Perhaps I could assist you?”

  On the one hand, I didn’t want to get Miss Hopkins in trouble by saying I was there to gossip about her employer. On the other hand, it wasn’t really gossip, I was trying to find out who killed him. Perhaps Miss Shepherd would know something Miss Hopkins didn’t. After all, I had thought Miss Hopkins reminded me of Milly, which meant she probably wasn’t the best witness in the world. “I hope so. My cousin is Milly Prynne.”

  “Oh my. Yes, she was in here a few days ago looking for a position, but I had to tell her we weren’t hiring anyone at the moment. And then...” She hesitated then pressed on, “Then I heard she had been arrested for Mr. Hilliard’s murder, and I wasn’t sure what to make of that.”

  “I’m trying to find out who actually killed him.”

  “Naturally,” Miss Shepherd said. “Is that why you’ve been talking to Miss Hopkins?”

  So she had noticed. “It is easy to get her to talk.”

  Miss Shepherd laughed. “It is. She’s terribly bored here. If your cousin had come a couple of weeks later, she might have gotten a position. That’s about how long I give Miss Hopkins before she decides she really ought to go to Shropshire and start planning her wedding in earnest. But that wasn’t what you wanted to know. I’m afraid I don’t know much about Mr. Hilliard’s life outside of the shop, but if there’s anything about the shop you’d like to know, I’m happy to try.”

  I was beginning to think I should have gone directly to Miss Shepherd rather than bothering with Miss Hopkins. “Can you think of anyone who would have wanted to kill him?”

  “I’ve been trying to ever since he died, but there’s nothing connected to the shop. We’re a small operation. There’s no one wanting the building. There’s really no way to make enemies in a little shop like this. I’ve been assuming it’s someone from his personal life. Nothing else makes sense.”

  I hadn’t supposed it would be that easy. “What about his tinkering projects?”

  “I wasn’t aware that he had any. He wasn’t particularly interested in tinkering, at least I never thought so.”

  That seemed decidedly odd. “Then why a tinkering shop?”

  “He was trying to find something that works here. This is the fourth incarnation of this shop. When he bought it, it was a haberdashery, and doing quite well. I was the manager then, and I think I was included in the purchase or something. He didn’t know anything about sewing or knitting, so he reinvented it as a chocolate shop. The chocolatier he hired quit after two months, something about the quality of the ingredients he insisted on using, and he couldn’t find another, so he tried a bookshop, which I rather enjoyed as I got to read the inventory when there were no customers, but it was the third bookshop within two blocks, so it wasn’t exactly a success either. There weren’t any tinkering shops in the area, so he decided to try a tinkering shop.”

  That did not sound like the sort of person who would rent rooms just to have a space away from home to tinker. And when I said it like that, surely he would have had plenty of space in his house in Bloomsbury to do that. So why rent the room at all? “So you have no idea why he would have rented space to work on tinkering projects?”

  “That doesn’t sound like him at all. If he’d wanted to work on something, his house is certainly big enough. I was just there for the wake, that’s why I gave Miss Hopkins the rest of the day off, and he would have had plenty of space for a workshop there. And then he owns the whole building here, including the flats above this shop. He could easily have made one of them into a workspace. You’re certain he had someplace like that for tinkering? Not someplace he was, I don’t kno
w, meeting a woman or something?”

  “No, I’ve been there. It was definitely a tinkering space. There wouldn’t have been room to entertain a woman. From what I could see, he was working on half-scale mechanical animals. Can you think of any reason why he would have been making something like that?”

  “Half-scale animals? We wouldn’t have anything like that here. We wouldn’t have the room to display more than one or two in the window, certainly not the space for kits, and you wouldn’t design one just for that, not when you can just buy one or the plans to make one. And they really don’t have any other practical purpose that I can think of. I mean, where would you use one?” Miss Shepherd shook her head. “No, that doesn’t seem like something he’d even be working on. Mr. Hilliard enjoyed fiddling with the things we have in here, but he never really made anything. He was more of an idea person. The sort who’d say wouldn’t it be clever if someone... and then never got around to doing it. Or start it, and never finish it, like the coin sorter he added to the till.”

  “Is that what you were trying to fix?”

  She nodded. “It just needs a small adjustment so the coins don’t all fall into the first bin. Simple enough, which is good as I have to do it at least once a week, but I don’t have the right tool today. Or rather I have the right tool but the wrong size. Somehow we have two size-six gear turners and no size five, which is what the machine needs. I thought perhaps Miss Hopkins had mistakenly put one of ours in a display, but I can’t find a surplus size five or a missing size six anywhere in the shop. Which means I’m stuck trying to get the gears adjusted with the size four, which is just a bit too small. I don’t want to use one of the ones we have for sale if we’re going to sell it. I thought I could tell which of the sixes was ours and which the one from the shop floor, at least, but they both look to have a bit of wear on them, so I think I’m just going to have to ask her what she did with them when she gets back.”