by L. A. Nisula
“Can we see him?” asked the other, who was called Kittering.
“Don’t know. I didn’t ask. Constable Triply went back on his rounds. You could try to find him. He might know.”
“Perhaps we should. He’ll want to know what we did here.”
Constable Edwards nodded and slipped Charlie a coin. Constable Kittering did the same on the way out.
I dug around in my handbag and handed him a shilling.
“You didn’t need to, miss, Dr. Travers paid me too. And those two. And I might try for something out of old Wainwright. He won’t, but I did help save his life, so it’s worth trying. Anyway, Dr. Travers said a few more minutes and he’d have been a goner.”
“Take it anyway. I wouldn’t have found Harley Street without you.”
“Sure you would. But I won’t argue with a lady.” He slipped the coin in his pocket with the others.
“Did they say anything before I got here?”
Charlie grinned. “That’s why you wanted to give a bit extra. Most exciting bit of the whole affair. Wainwright said one thing as Doc was leading him through. ‘In the cake.’ That means he thinks he was poisoned with cake, don’t it?”
“It seems so. And quite specific.”
Charlie shrugged. “I can think of plenty of fellows who’d talk about poisoning him, but none that would. Still, makes the story that much better. Have a good night.”
When he’d left, Kate picked up a bit of the telephone. “I wonder if one of us should go and visit him.”
“To what purpose?” Mrs. Albright asked.
“See what he thinks happened. Point out that it couldn’t have happened here. I don’t know.”
I knew what Kate was really saying. Set him on another suspect. It wasn’t a bad idea, if he was up to visitors.
“They probably won’t let anyone in until morning,” Mrs. Albright pointed out, putting an end to the discussion. “I suppose you two want to be getting home.”
I decided to slip out before Kate mentioned she was saying, just in case Mrs. Albright didn’t fall for the telephone excuse. “The Underground is convenient for me. I’ll try to stop by in the morning and see how everything here is going.”
“I’ll get the typewriter for you. Just a minute.” Kate hurried up the stairs.
As Kate went to get the typewriter, Mrs. Albright went to look at the closet that was still more coat closet than telephone cabinet. I went to join her. “It seems to be progressing,” I offered.
“It does. And it will be so convenient when it’s done. There’s a telephone at the aviary, but that is a bit of a walk, and if something happens...”
I nodded. “Now seems like an excellent time to have a convenient way to call for help. Would you like me to hint to Kate that it might be a good idea if she finished this first?”
“I don’t want to put her to any trouble when she and Ada are so busy moving house and setting up.”
“I don’t think she’d mind. She mentioned something about wanting to get it done.”
“She wanted an excuse to spend the night here after the poisoning and the police, didn’t she?”
“She might have hinted at that too, yes.”
“Do you think it will be putting her out?”
“She already called Ada.”
Mrs. Albright poked at the door to the closet, which was forced open by something stuck in the gap near the hinges and was blocking part of the hallway to her apartment. “Then I won’t argue too much when she brings it up. It is good to have someone around when the police show up, and I keep having the feeling they will again.”
We could hear Kate coming down the stairs so I went to meet her. “It was still under the bed. Keep it as long as you like, and let me know if you have any trouble with it. It’s just a manual one, but I’ve made some modifications. You’ll have to tell me what you think of them.”
The typewriter was stored in an old suitcase, so it was easy enough to carry. “Thanks. I’ll see you tomorrow.” I left before they began working out Kate’s arrangements for the evening.
~ * ~ * ~
Milly was waiting for me when I got back to Nell Lane. I started to tell her about the events at Paddington Street but quickly gave up as she seemed to lose interest almost before I’d started and gave her the bare-bones version of events. She did perk up when I mentioned that Kate had sent along a typewriter and wanted to know when I was going to begin working on her brilliant plan. She was so ready for me to begin, she even offered to go out and bring back some fish and chips, and didn’t ask me for money in advance. That left me fifteen minutes of peace and quiet to get the typewriter set up on the small table, although that did also mean we wouldn’t have anywhere to eat when Milly returned, but I thought we’d worry about that when we had to. Most of the modifications seemed to be in the inner workings of the machine. Somehow I managed to arrange the papers Milly had brought from Billings and Sons on the table between the discarded tea things and the typewriter, and get myself set up in a way that, while not comfortable, could at least pretend to be efficient.
Milly’s idea turned out to be not terrible, even if it did leave me with more work and her with nothing to do but ask questions about how soon it would be done. It also gave me an idea of what Billings and Sons did. It was clear someone had been waiting for Mr. Dently near his office, ready to strike, or perhaps had been warned by someone inside that he was leaving. Either way, the office seemed connected to the murder, more connected than Paddington Street, anyway. The typing consisted of lists of recently booked travel that needed to be typed up and sent out to the ordering businesses. Everything in the file was in Mr. Dently’s handwriting. No one in the office must have wanted the task of typing up the dead man’s sales. But that suited my purposes exactly.
Or it would have if there had been anything remotely suspicious in the orders. A party of five from a bank traveling to Strasbourg and needing train tickets, ferry crossings, and hotel rooms. A party of two from a drapers needing train tickets to Edinburgh and a hotel there. A group from a solicitor’s office needed five rooms in York, travel to be arranged by client. Not one entry looked unusual or out of place. Nothing that seemed worth murdering over. And no mention of train stations, Paddington or otherwise. Still, it gave me an idea of what sort of business the firm did, and if I managed to get a look at any of the other papers at the office, I was fairly confident I would be able to spot something off now. More importantly, I was now certain the handwriting in the notes was the same as the handwriting on the address Inspector Wainwright had shown us. So Mr. Dently had written the note himself, it wasn’t some sort of summons or other message sent to him.
When Milly returned with two packets of fish and chips, I’d made a dent in the typing, enough to know there wasn’t anything in the papers that was going to solve the case. It seemed like a good time to take a break, so Milly and I ate our dinner and discussed what she should do when she went back to Billings and Sons, what sorts of things she should be looking out for, and the sorts of questions she should ask. Nothing too probing as I didn’t want them to realize what she was doing and Milly was not the most subtle of people, but we agreed she would say someone had shown her a newspaper article about the murder and she was worried about the whole thing. Worried for Milly would probably look like excited, but that would work too as it wasn’t unusual for someone to be interested in a murder they had the most peripheral of connections to. I spent the rest of the evening finishing the typing so Milly could bring it back the next day, and maybe find something I could bring to Inspector Wainwright, if he was up to having visitors.
It was a sign of how enthusiastic Milly was about the whole project that she was up early the next morning and ready to bring the finished typing over to Billings and Sons when they opened. “Maybe they’ll give me a bonus for getting it done so quickly,” she said as she pinned on her new hat.
I considered asking just how much we were being paid for this project and how much of that
money I could expect to see, but I decided on one idea at a time. “Be careful how you ask. We don’t want them asking you to leave before you find anything out.”
“Don’t be silly, Cassie. If I don’t ask about more money, they’ll know something’s up. Leave it to me.”
“Just remember, we’re trying to find a murderer.”
“But if we can get paid a bit more, why shouldn’t we take it? Don’t worry.”
At least she had said we were getting paid.
I didn’t think it would take Milly long to deliver the papers, and I hoped she would come back to Nell Lane before she decided to go somewhere else, so when she’d gone, I went out to the local shops to pick up a few more things for our kitchen then settled in with Kate’s typewriter to try out some of the features as she’d asked. She really had done some clever things without automating the typewriter, like making the type basket holding the typebars in place removable so a new one with a different font could be dropped in and still line up with the keys perfectly. She had several replacement ones in the suitcase, mostly playing with fonts, but a couple that were labeled with things like “Romance Languages” and “Nordic Languages” which I assumed contained the keys needed to write in languages that fell into those categories. I remembered Inspector Burrows mentioning he could get me some typing jobs if I wanted a bit of money and wondered if I could buy the typewriter off of Kate. It would certainly come in handy.
I had switched the typeface to a nice script and written a thank-you to Kate more to test out the feature than because I thought she expected one and was wondering if I ought to choose a nice, sturdy font and type out my notes for Inspector Wainwright when I heard Milly unlocking the door.
“I did just as you asked, Cassie, and asked them if anything unusual happened on Tuesday, aside from the murder, of course.”
I hoped she hadn’t been too obvious about it. “And what did they say?”
“Nothing at all, unless you count two dogs getting into a fight outside the door, the postman bringing half the mail for the rest of the block to them, Mr. Emrick buying candy for the dish—so they were supposed to be candy and he must have bought cough drops by mistake—and some salesman trying to sell them all a new set of filing cabinets. And did you know that there are no sons at all involved in it at all? Mr. Billings doesn’t have any. Really, they must have a terribly boring time there if that’s their excitement. But they did like your typing.”
I didn’t see that there was much in what Milly had found that was useful, but perhaps there was more to one of the clues. Perhaps one of the letters was somehow terribly important, or the filing cabinet salesman was a disguise, or I’d ready too many penny dreadfuls on the boat over.
Milly didn’t notice my silence. “So I consider that a successful bit of investigating. We ought to go out to celebrate.”
“I was going to go to the hospital and see if I could get in to see the inspector.” I hadn’t been planning on doing that until I said it, but it had the desired effect.
“That seems easier to do on your own. They might not let two people in.” Apparently, I had done such a good job of describing Inspector Wainwright that she had no desire to meet him.
“Probably. I’ll let you know what happens.” I left before she could change her mind or ask me anything else, particularly as I was planning on stopping by Paddington Street to let Kate know the typewriter had been a success and arrange for its return, and that was the sort of thing Milly might want to be included in.
~ * ~ * ~
As I walked out of the Baker Street Underground station, I decided to get the worst visit over with. Then perhaps I could take Kate out for a bit of lunch and tell her what I thought of the typewriter. Maybe I’d even have some good news for Mrs. Albright. With that decided, I set out for the hospital. All I needed at the reception desk was Inspector Wainwright’s name and I was told he was on the third floor. I thought that was rather lax, particularly considering he’d been poisoned, until I got to the third and found a police constable standing near the door watching everyone come in. I recognized him from his visits to Paddington Street and struggled to remember if I’d heard his name. “I came to look in on Inspector Wainwright. How is he?”
It seemed he recognized me too. “Well enough for a short visit. Nice of you to come see how he is. It’s the second door on the left.”
I wouldn’t have been surprised to find I’d been the only visitor save the constables. “Thank you, Constable Kittering.” He smiled at that so I thought I’d managed to remember correctly.
It was easy to tell which was the second door on the left, as the other constable from Paddington Street was standing outside of it. He must have recognized me as well, as he smiled when I approached. “Good morning. It’s nice to see he has some visitors.”
So I had been right about the lack of interest in his condition. “I thought I’d see how he was getting on.”
“Go right on through. They just brought him his lunch.”
When I entered the room, I saw Inspector Wainwright had it to himself. I wondered if that had something to do with security, or because he was a policeman, or if no one wanted to force an ill person to share with him. I had the feeling he was not an easy patient.
Inspector Wainwright was sitting up in bed with a tray across his lap and a plate of food in front of him. He looked up when he heard the door open and scowled when he saw that it was me. “I’m too ill to have visitors,” he grumbled at me.
I knew the constables wouldn’t have let me pass if he was too sick to see anyone. “Inspector, if you were that ill, they wouldn’t have brought you sausages with mashed potatoes.”
“Bangers and mash,” he corrected. “And I am well enough for lunch, but not well enough to deal with friends of the person who put me here.”
I knew he was just being difficult, but then he was in the hospital, so I supposed I ought to be a bit sympathetic, which meant I didn’t glare as I started questioning him. “Why do you think it was Mrs. Albright who poisoned you?”
He did glare at me. “Should I call for the nurse and have her get rid of you?”
“I’ll just come back later. Ask Inspector Burrows if you don’t believe me.”
He sighed. “If it will get rid of you. The timing was right. She’s my primary suspect in a murder case, so she has motive. And she had the means with her cake.”
“But we all had some of that cake she gave you, and only you got sick.”
“There’s nothing to stop her from poisoning just one piece.”
“In her kitchen? With you sitting there?”
“She knew I was in the house. She would have known I was coming down to see her before I left.”
“And you didn’t notice the poison?”
“No, I wouldn’t have, not in that cake.”
“Why not?” When he didn’t answer, I leaned against the foot of the bed and thought about it. “Almond cake, so you think it was cyanide? The almonds would mask the smell.”
“They’re running tests.” But I could tell from his expression that I was right and he was surprised that I had figured it out, although why that would be when he thought Mrs. Albright had been able to come up with the plan was another puzzle.
“Well, I can assure you none of the rest of us is sick. And Kate Ferris was with her the whole time we were in the attic, so she wouldn’t have had the chance to poison anything.” I wasn’t positive on the last bit, but he didn’t need to know that. “And she didn’t know you were going to accuse her of anything until we came back down and you threw the hat on the table. Surely you would have seen her do it then.” I leaned against the end of the bed. “But clearly you were poisoned,” I said, partly to show him a bit of sympathy, partly to myself. “I wonder how.” I tapped my finger against the knob on the end of the bed, which seemed to annoy him. As he was in the hospital, I stopped. “How long would the poison have taken to start working?”
“Not more than fifteen minutes, accordi
ng to the doctor. And I was at Paddington Street longer than that.”
“So you must have ingested it there.” I was quite proud of myself for having come up with ingested so quickly, not that Inspector Wainwright was impressed.
“In the cake, as I said. The only things I ate there were the tea from the communal pot and the cake.”
“Which we wouldn’t have even offered to you if you hadn’t been coughing.” Coughing. He’d been coughing upstairs too. “Cough drops.”
“Miss Pengear...”
“You had a cough drop when we were upstairs, just before we found the hat. That would have been within the time frame. Where did you get it?”
“My pocket. Miss Pengear...”
I remembered another instance of cough drops. Milly and the mistake at Billings and Sons. “Were there any cough drops in Mr. Dently’s pocket? And what about what they had at Billings and Sons?”
“All different brands.”
“And yours?”
“Also different. And also being tested, along with everything edible in my pockets.”
So he had checked that already. “But where did you get them? When Milly was at the office, I asked her to see if anything odd had happened, and one of them said Mr. Emrick had topped up the dish of candy, only it was with cough drops.”
“I hardly think...”
“She didn’t think it was anything either. Neither did I until this moment. But if they told her Mr. Emrick bought them when she asked about anything odd that had happened, it must mean he never did that sort of thing, and I know the type. They’d rather spend half-an-hour and two pounds to hire a typist for a three-line letter they could do themselves in ten minutes because it isn’t their job. If he brought cough drops, there had to be a reason.”
“Such as? He wanted to poison someone?”
“Why not? If Mr. Dently knew something he didn’t want found out, Mr. Emrick could have done it. Poisoned a batch of cough drops, different from the normal candies so he would know which they were, and dropped them in the bowl.”