by L. A. Nisula
Before he could decide whether to yell at me or throw me out, a constable, not Milly’s, poked his head in the door. “Sir, coroner says he’s done with these.”
“Thank you, Constable.”
I read as much of the top page as I could before Inspector Peterson got the empty Milly/Hilliard folder from his desk and hid the papers inside. Wound made by an uneven, cross-shaped blade, roughly one inch-by-one and a half inch. And then the folder closed.
“What’s a—”
“Miss Pengear, I promise I will read your notes and look into everything there that seems relevant, but I feel obligated to remind you again that you are not an investigator. Go home. Tomorrow, go see the Tower, or the Rosetta Stone, or London Bridge. It doesn’t really matter, something nice, and most importantly, leave the police work to me.”
“Would you have gotten this on your own?”
“Miss Pengear, what sort of an alibi do you have for last Thursday?”
“Steamship, middle of the Atlantic Ocean.”
“Can you prove it?”
“I have the ticket and the passport stamp.”
“Pity. Well, your cousin must be eager to leave this place. Good day.”
I was tempted to protest, but he was probably right. I had Milly back and he was going to investigate, that should be enough for me. As I went back into the lobby, I wondered what a cross-shaped blade, one inch-by-one and a half-inch was. It certainly did not describe the letter opener under the body. And it must have been distinctive somehow, something that would connect the killer to Mr. Hilliard. At least I’d left Inspector Peterson my notes on everyone I’d spoken to so far.
When I got back to the lobby, Milly was still talking to Constable Jenkins. “Were we ready to go?”
Milly looked surprised as she turned. “I’m sorry, Cassie. I didn’t mean to keep you waiting. Constable Jenkins is still on duty, so he won’t be joining us.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I lied. I wondered if Milly had even noticed I’d left the lobby. “Well, let’s get going then.”
“He did tell me about a nice little shop around the corner. I think the policemen go there for their breaks.”
I highly doubted he’d suggested anyplace the police would go to Milly, but if that was where she wanted to go for something to eat, it was fine with me.
The place Constable Jenkins had suggested was a tea shop that I couldn’t imagine any policeman going into unless he was taking his mother or his girl out for a meal, and then most likely under duress, but it suited Milly. As it was barely past breakfast time, I ordered tea and scones, while Milly ordered a full complement of finger sandwiches, cake, pastries, and tea. I waited until Milly had chosen her food and the tea was poured before I said, “We have to get some things sorted out.”
“Like what?” Milly was paying more attention to the sandwiches than to my questions, but I couldn’t tell if it was because she hadn’t had a proper meal in prison or because she didn’t grasp the danger she was still in.
“What do you remember about finding the body?”
“I already told you..”
I could tell she was going to complain if I had her start at the beginning, and who knew how her story had changed while she’d been planning for her jailhouse interviews, so I went straight to the questioning. “I saw the witness report. But there were quite a few things you didn’t answer. For starters, how did you get into Mr. Hilliard’s building?”
“There was a man leaving by the front door and he let me into the building. Then I went up, and his door was open.”
I stared at her, too many questions fighting to get out of my mouth at the same time. I finally managed, “A man was leaving when you went in?”
“That’s right.” She helped herself to the shrimp sandwiches.
“How long were you waiting outside before he came out?” Maybe she hadn’t said anything because there hadn’t been time for him to commit the murder.
“It seemed like forever, but I think about fifteen minutes.”
So, plenty of time for whatever led to the murder and the murder itself. “What did he look like?”
“I didn’t really notice.”
And hadn’t thought it worth telling anyone either. “Milly, he could very well have been the killer.”
She stopped with the tiny sandwich half-way to her mouth. “Do you think so?”
“Well, do people usually let strangers into buildings they live in? Did he say anything? Ask you anything?”
Milly put down her sandwich. “No, he didn’t say anything. I said the normal stuff, ‘Excuse me’ and ‘thank you,’ but he just walked out.”
“And did he deliberately held the door for you?”
“Yes, definitely. He was on the front step, and he moved back against the railing so I could pass, and his hand was on the door.”
“Well, we know it was a man. That’s something at least.” I took a scone.
“We think it was a man. I thought it was since he was polite and wearing trousers, but if you think it was the killer, I can’t be completely certain it wasn’t a woman in disguise.”
I put my scone down. “You have to think, Milly. Anything. How tall, what his hands looked like, hair color.”
“Hat and gloves. And when he let me in, his back was to me. I’m so sorry, Cassie.”
So was I. “Well, you didn’t know you were going to find a corpse.” Although that didn’t excuse her from not telling the police afterward. I went back to my scone. “But why, oh why did you pick up the knife?”
“That was really stupid, wasn’t it? It was there, so I picked it up. Simple as that, I’m afraid.”
“And you didn’t get help because?”
“I was scared. I knew they’d suspect me. And they do.”
“Mainly because you didn’t report it.”
“And found the body.”
No, it was mainly because she didn’t report it, but she didn’t want to hear that, so she wouldn’t, no matter how many times I said it. I sighed. “What’s done is done. After we finish here, do you want to go straight home or could we make a quick stop?”
Milly looked up from selecting a cake. “Sure, where do you want to go?”
“To Mr. Hilliard’s building, if you don’t mind.”
“Why would you want to go there? Hoping for another body?
“No, one is more than enough. I was hoping, if you went there, it would jog your memory.”
“If you think it would help.” Milly shrugged.
I was more optimistic, but then I had to be. It was my only idea.
We took the Underground to Mr. Hilliard’s Portland Road building, mainly to give me time to think of what we should do when we got there. I was hoping Milly would remember something, anything, about the man she saw that day which might help Inspector Peterson to find him. The fact that he existed was good. The fact that she hadn’t mentioned him before now was not. There was no one on Portland Road when we got there, so nothing to disturb our investigating.
I stopped on the street just in front of the house. “All right, which side did you come from?”
“I was coming from his shop, so that way.”
“Then come just the way you did then, and try to remember what you saw. Especially who you saw coming out of the building.” I leaned against the iron railing. “Will I bother you here?”
Milly shrugged. “I don’t know what you expect me to remember, though.”
“Just describe what you saw.”
Milly went to the end of the street and walked back to the steps leading up to the front door.
“Where were you when he came out?”
Milly furrowed her brow. “I was half-way up the steps when I noticed him coming out, so right about here.”
She was standing on the second step. “What did he do then? Are we still assuming that it is a him?”
“I’m still not sure. I went the rest of the way up the steps, and he came out the door and held it open fo
r me.”
That was what she had already told me. “Let’s try this.” I went up on the steps and stood by the door. “So he came out like this.”
“No, he had his left hand on the door, and he kind of pushed it out and held it.”
I pantomimed what she described. In order to pull the door the way she described and hold it open, I had to go down one step. “Is this where his hand was?”
“I think so.”
“And where was his head?”
Milly stared at me. “Almost even with the top of my head.”
“And I’m normally about the same height as you, so he’d be about six inches taller than either of us.” That was more than I’d had a minute ago. “And what about his arm; how bent was it?”
“More than yours. Noticeably more.”
“So his arms were longer, which is consistent with his height. And he stood like this?” I pantomimed pulling the door open and stood with my back to Milly and my hips pressed against the handrail.
“That’s right.”
It was an awkward way to stand because I couldn’t see where Milly was, and that told me he was probably hiding from her.
“And what was he wearing?”
“A black raincoat and a black hat.”
“Was it raining?”
“It’s always raining here.”
“So it didn’t seem odd.” I wondered what else I could ask. “What about hair? Color? Long? Short?”
“Under the hat.”
“Hands?”
“He had gloves on. They weren’t custom made, so I couldn’t tell the shape of his hands at all.”
“What about his build? Skinny? Fat? Muscular?”
“Not skinny, but not fat. Bulky, I guess.” She stared at me. “His coat went from the door to the fifth railing. And I had to push against the railing on this side.”
I stepped back until Milly said, “There. That feels right.”
I wasn’t quite certain what that meant, but it was someone with broad shoulders and not really fat, but someone who took up space. “All right, I guess that helps.”
“You guess?”
“None of my suspects fits the description.”
Milly’s face fell.
“But I’ll tell Inspector Peterson about it. He might know someone that fits. Or it might be enough to convince him there was someone with a better opportunity than you. Come on, let’s go in.”
Milly didn’t protest, so I put one of my calling cards in the tube for flat A and hoped Mrs. Branston would let us in. She didn’t disappoint. The latchkey came over and in a few minutes, we were standing the foyer with Mrs. Branston watching us from the door to her flat.
“Back again, eh? Is this the cousin? I see she’s out.”
I decided introductions weren’t really needed and got straight to the point. “I was hoping I could show her the crime scene. I thought maybe Milly might remember something if we looked around.”
Mrs. Branston shrugged. “You can try, but there’s nothing there.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Just what I said. There’s nothing in there but the furniture that came with the room. The police came and took down their barriers yesterday, and someone came to clear it out just after.”
“Do you know who came?”
“Family, I would expect. They didn’t stop to say anything.”
“But you knew they took everything?”
“Didn’t I hear them clattering around last night? I was going to go up and see what was going on and tell them they weren’t getting out of this month’s rent, no matter what they thought. Pay for the whole month or get out on the first, that’s my policy. But then I saw they’d left payment for this month and next under my door, so I thought they wanted to be done with the place and left them to it.”
“So no one stopped to tell you what was going on? You weren’t able to see if it was the brother or servants who came?”
“No, not a soul said a word to me. Dragged myself up there this morning to see if I could have the woman in to clean it up or if I’d have to hire a boy to drag stuff out back, but they stripped it clean.”
“That seems odd.” I couldn’t think why either remaining Mr. Hilliard would be in such a hurry to get a lot of tinkering things, unless it wasn’t family but someone who knew about the room and was stealing the contents.
Mrs. Branston shrugged. “What was really odd is that they didn’t stop in for the key. I’d asked the inspector who questioned me when I could have the keys back so I could rent the place out, and he said they had to keep the evidence until the case was closed so I ought to just have a locksmith in if I was in a hurry. So where did they get the key, hmm?” She didn’t seem to expect an answer. “Did you want to go up?”
I looked over at Milly, but she shook her head. “I don’t know what I’d see.”
“All right, then should we go back to Nell Lane?”
Milly nodded. I thanked Mrs. Branston and we set out for the Underground again.
~ * ~ * ~
Milly chattered on during the ride, telling me about the people she’d met in prison, but I figured out rather quickly that she was making up half of what she said about them and started ignoring her. Mrs. Fitzpatrick must have seen us coming up the street as she was waiting on the front step. She caught Milly up in an embrace as we got to the door.
“You’re free!”
“They had to let me go.”
“Temporarily,” I added before they got carried away. They both brushed me off.
“Have you had lunch yet?”
“Yes,” I said before Milly forgot the meal we’d just had.
“Then come in and have a cup of tea.”
Milly let Mrs. Fitzpatrick lead her inside. I followed. As we passed through the front hall, Mrs. Fitzpatrick nodded to the table where she kept the mail. “Oh, Miss Pengear, there was a note left for you. I put it over there.”
“Thank you.” I wondered if Inspector Peterson wanted me for questioning or if one of my witnesses had remembered something. I was surprised to find a note from Jimmy asking me to meet him at the tea shop for lunch. It was actually from “Mr. J. Rossman, Esquire” and he was requesting my presence at the same establishment, half-past one, if it was convenient to my schedule, but I got the gist of it. I glanced at my watch pin and saw I’d just have time to get there. “Milly, I need to go out for a bit.”
“Take your time. Mrs. Fitzpatrick will take good care of me.”
At least she hadn’t asked to come along. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” I hurried out. I didn’t want to disappoint Jimmy if I could avoid it. Not only was he risking his job to find information for me, he’d actually been rather helpful.
When I got back to the tea shop where we’d met before, Jimmy was waiting for me at the same table. He was too excited to bother with his detective act. “I found it!”
Not very specific, but still good news. At least, I hoped it was. “I knew you’d be able to figure it out. What is it?”
“I got ahold of Mr. Lennox’s diary. The one he keeps his meeting notes in. I picked the lock on his drawer.”
I was starting to feel guilty for leading him down this path of crime. “I hope you won’t get in trouble.”
“Oh, no one will notice. The important thing is, I know why Mr. Hilliard wanted an appointment. He wanted a full audit of his accounts.”
“An audit?”
“I asked Mr. Andsdale about it. He said Mr. Hilliard thought he was turning a profit for the first time in years. That seems significant.”
“It certainly does.” So someone must not have wanted him to get his audit. I wondered what it would have shown. Embezzlement at the shop? Mr. Beauregard’s gambling? Something even more incriminating? “To celebrate this find, my treat.”
I watched his mental calculations until he decided it was acceptable to say, “If you insist.” He made a gesture to the waitress that probably would have made her ignore our table i
f he’d been just a bit older, and we ordered a substantial lunch, not quite what I wanted, as I’d just had tea with Milly, but I didn’t want him to think he shouldn’t order what he wanted once I’d said it was my treat, and ordering tea and scones would probably have made him think he should limit himself to the same. Once the food was ordered, he settled back into his detective pose and regarded me over his steepled fingers. “There were other developments as well.”
“Really?” I assumed he wanted to have something to discuss while we ate, so I was expecting something quite boring and useless and it was quite a surprise when he said,
“There’s another betting slip in the file.”
“One we missed when we were going through it?”
“No, one to be paid. All the ones in the file had already been paid when we looked at them.”
“Could someone be calling in an old debt?”
“No. I checked with my cousin. He’s a bookmaker too.”
Suddenly, I felt much less guilty about leading him down a path of petty crime.
“Taught me all about accounting and keeping records, and we checked. The last time Swinging Sal ran on a Thursday at seven in the evening was two years ago, and the odds were all wrong. This bet was placed last Thursday.”
So, the day he died. “Could he have placed the bet before he died?”
Jimmy shook his head. “It was one of the slips the girls sell on the spot. He would have had to place it just before the race.”
“And they let you do that on credit?”
“If you have an account.”
“And Milly said she followed Mr. Reginald after the shop closed for the day, so he couldn’t have stopped on the way to place it. And she found his body not long after he got to the flat. So unless Mr. Reginald was so devoted to gambling he came back from the grave to place a bet—”