01 - Memories of the Dead (9 page)

It took Clara a late evening visit to Mrs Wilton, and
lots of words of comfort that she was not about to face the hangman, to
discover Mrs Greengage’s old address in Eastbourne. It was fortunate that Mrs
Wilton had such a nose for details and gossip. At least it saved having to
disturb the grieving widower, though Clara was contemplating another
conversation with him anyway as soon as she could.

The trains were back running
on their old timetables since the war, so there was little difficulty getting
tickets for Eastbourne. Though getting Tommy in his cumbersome wheelchair on
the train was another matter. The step into the carriage and the narrow doorway
made it seem an impossible task before the train pulled out of the station.
Only the assistance of a railway porter saved the day. Clearly it was not the
first wheelchair he had loaded, because as soon as Tommy was aboard he found
some heavy wooden blocks to put in front of the wheels of the chair to prevent
it rolling forward.

Clara breathed a sigh of
relief as she settled into a horse-hair padded seat. Annie perched opposite
her.

“I made egg sandwiches.” She
said as a whistle rang out and the train heaved into motion, “For when we get
peckish.”

Annie was still a tad unclear
on the purpose for their trip and imagined it was something to pull Tommy out
of his mood. She had organised a luncheon like they were going on a picnic and
was wearing her best hat. Clara thought it was perhaps time to properly explain
their objective.

“Annie, you know all this
business about Mrs Greengage?”

“That’s all anyone talks
about.” Annie nodded.

“Well, I am doing a little bit
of my own detective work into the case, for the sake of…” How to refer to Mrs
Wilton discreetly? “…a friend.”

“What she means Annie is that
we are going to a place called Oakham Avenue in Eastbourne to be terribly nosy
and ask lots of questions about the deceased.” Tommy butted in.

“This is not about being nosy,
this is proper detective work and very important. So you mustn’t tell a soul
Annie.”

Annie was looking a little
bewildered.

“If it makes you feel better
Annie the police know all about what I am doing.” Clara bent the truth only
slightly.

“So what is important about
Oakham Avenue?” The maid asked.

“Mrs Greengage used to live
there.” Tommy elaborated, “And Clara is after some background information.”

“Background?” Clara glanced at
him.

“Yes, the stuff in a person’s
past. It was a term used in that detective book.”

“So things like Mr Greengage
being in the music halls before the war?” Annie said.

They both looked at her.

“Where did you hear that?”

“Dr Macpherson’s tweenie maid.
She does occasional outside work including weekly cleaning at the Greengages’
house. She was dusting the writing desk once and it fell open, accidental
like.”

“Of course.” Tommy nodded
insincerely.

“Well, inside were all these
old posters from music halls and Mr Greengage was on them. Though looking all
done up for the stage, o’ course. The posters claimed he was very good. Used to
sing and do the ven-tilly-thing, where someone throws their voice.”

A cog slipped into place in
Clara’s mind. The strange powers Augustus displayed now made sense. But it
opened another thought as well. If a maid could walk in and find theatre
posters in the writing desk, then she could also find those riddles.

“What is this maid’s name?”

“Alice.” Annie shrugged,
“That’s all I know her by.”

It wasn’t much but if Clara
could discover whether Alice had been at the house on the day of the murder it
might just explain the loss of the riddles.

“An interesting thought just
come to you, old thing?” Tommy queried when he noticed the distant look on
Clara’s face.

“More than one actually.”
Clara replied, “But there are still so many gaps, oh well, let’s keep at it.”

The train rumbled on, the
scenery flicking by and changing from town to countryside and then back to
town. They arrived at Eastbourne and asked directions to Oakham Avenue.
Thankfully it wasn’t a long walk and the women took turns pushing Tommy to
share the load.

“So where do we begin?” Annie
looked up at the red brick terrace houses of Oakham Avenue. They were grander
than Mrs Greengage’s current property and the obvious conclusion was that the
clairvoyant had gone down in the world. Was that because she was running from
someone or because her financial circumstances had changed? Now Clara knew more
about Mr Greengage she was inclined to believe the latter.

“You start at that end of the
road, I’ll start this end and we can meet in the middle.” Clara directed.

“Righty-ho.” Tommy grinned
cheerfully, “First to find a suspect can treat us all to a sticky bun.”

“Do take this seriously.”
Clara heard Annie whisper to him as they headed down the street.

Clara started at number 49
which looked a little on the worn side and proved to be owned by a retired
major who had only been in the area a month. Number 47 also proved to have
recent new tenants as it was a rented property. Number 45 was empty and so the
story continued as she worked her way down the row. Finally at number 39 she
was greeted by a maid who responded to her initial queries with confirmation
that her mistress had been living there many years, though was not sure the
exact number.

She ushered Clara into a front
parlour and went to see if her mistress was free to talk. It was slightly
improper. The maid should have checked first before asking her in, but first
appearances at the house suggested it was a place where informality was
welcomed.

The front room was littered
with the remnants of the occupant’s activities. A flower press stood open on a
table beside a scrapbook. A half-finished embroidery was flung on a chair by
the fireplace, the needle loose and hanging precariously from a thread over the
edge. Clara desperately wanted to snatch it up and secure it in the fabric
before it was lost.

A sketchy watercolour of more
flowers stood forlornly in the window, surrounded by other incomplete drawings.
In fact Clara suspected this was a house where nothing was ever finished properly.
Books stood in stacks by the table, some open or containing torn paper for page
markers. Clara picked one up and read the title –
Spiritualism in the Modern
Age
. It seemed she had stumbled on just the right household.

Abruptly the door flung open
and a woman appeared in what could be best described as Arabian costume. She
wore strange loose trousers and a drapery of shawls about her shoulders and
head. Beads dripped off her in coral reds and deep blues. She entered the room
with a flourish that allowed Clara to see she was bare-footed. It was all very
theatrical and, in Clara’s mind, quite silly.

“Clara Fitzgerald.” She
offered her hand as the maid had not reappeared to introduce her.

“Madame Delmont.” The woman
stood before her, pressed her hands together like she was praying, and took a
deep bow.

Clara was now beginning to
think this was not the right house at all.

“My maid says you are making
enquiries about a former resident in our road?” Madame Delmont said airily, “Do
be seated.”

Clara aimed for the chair by
the fireplace and took the opportunity to remove the piece of offending sewing,
while Madame Delmont descended onto a sofa bed near the window.

“I am making enquiries on
behalf of an interested party about a lady named Mrs Greengage.” Clara began.

“Her!” Delmont sat up
suddenly, “Real old bag of wind she was. What has she done?”

Clara took a moment before
deciding not to reveal the murder – such revelations had a tendency to stilt
conversation.

“It was a problem over a
reading, I believe.” Clara replied vaguely, “And Mrs Greengage is no longer
available to rectify the problem.”

“That doesn’t surprise me, she
is a sly one and as I always told her, it does not do to charge for the talents
one has been freely given.”

“You mean her psychic
abilities?”

“Yes. Though if you ask me
there was a little something ‘forced’ about them. I know these things, I am an
adept myself you see.”

“An adept?” Clara tried to
mask her scepticism.

“Oh yes, in spiritual matters.
I have travelled all over the East to learn my skills. It quite grated on my
nerves to see that home-grown witch plying her talent as though it was a
parlour game. You have to take these things seriously or else the Spirits will
come for you.”

That was uncomfortably close
to home.

“So you didn’t like her?”

“Didn’t like is rather harsh.
I was concerned for her and I didn’t approve of what she was doing.”

“I see.”

“I take it she has passed on
false information?” Madame Delmont was looking rather keen now, clearly having
a spiritual talent did not prevent you from being a gossip.

“Well, that is the thing, the
lady I am making enquiries for isn’t sure what to make of the information and
it seems some of it may have been withheld.”

“I knew it!” Delmont slapped
her thighs with excitement, “I always said she was using her skills to drag
people along and make money. It was all so much show you see. Everything from
her clothes to the room she gave readings in.”

Clara glanced at Madame
Delmont’s clothes, but said nothing.

“I blame the husband of
course. He was on the stage. She was always using some sort of novelty to lure
in trade.”

“Like Augustus the parrot?”
Clara offered.

Madame Delmont looked blank.

“I don’t recall a parrot, but
I remember for a time she had a crystal ball, of all things! Then there was the
witch’s ball hung at the door and the shawl embroidered with occult symbols
that she liked to claim was a gift from a Red Indian Chieftain. Of course there
are those that are impressed by all that, and
they
flocked to her.”

Madame Delmont wrinkled her
nose as though she had smelt something bad. But the picture she was painting of
Mrs Greengage was certainly interesting.

“Did you ever hear about her
producing riddles from the dead?”

“No.” Delmont shrugged,
“Though it sounds the sort of thing she would do.”

“And were there any scandals
resulting from her use of novelties?” Clara persisted.

“Not that I remember.” Madame
Delmont tapped her lips with one finger, “It was very irritating how she always
managed to get away with her charades.”

Clara recognised jealousy when
it was before her, but it didn’t seem to add up to Delmont being a suspect and
it certainly didn’t tell her about the crime Mrs Greengage supposedly
uncovered.

“I was under the impression,”
She said carefully, “That it was some sort of scandal that made Mrs Greengage leave
Eastbourne and go to Brighton.”

“No, that wasn’t one of her
novelties.” Delmont paused, “That was far more serious, it was the one thing I
agreed with her on.”

“I don’t quite understand.”

“She came to me one evening,
it must have been the November before last and she was in an awful state. For a
second or two I quite thought she had lost her mind. She was talking some
strange story about receiving a message from the Spirits quite out of the blue
and was dreadfully disturbed by it. I let her talk, what else could I do? She
sat exactly where you are and said ‘I just had a vision of a murder’.”

“Really?” Clara was trying to
picture the scene and found it all so preposterous.

“She was very sincere. I made
her a cup of tea and asked her to explain. She said she had been pulling a
joint of mutton out of the oven when this terrible pain hit her between the
eyes and then she saw this woman being poisoned. She saw the culprit clear as
day. I was quite astonished because I had always thought her powers a bit…”

“Forced?” Clara suggested.

“Did I say that? Well, yes
that was it, after all if anyone was to witness a murder, spiritually speaking,
it should really have been me. I have, after all, been trained in the art of
dream-walking and advanced mesmerisation by a Chinese monk.”

“And these things are
important?”

“It means I can memorise a
dream and replay it any time in my head. You can see how that would be useful
in a murder case.”

If you had the dream, Clara
thought to herself, only you didn’t and Mrs Greengage, the charlatan, did.

“Then what?” Clara asked.

“She drank her tea and went
home. I had convinced her you see that it was all an hallucination brought on
by over-work.” Delmont smile a little, “I mean, I could hardly credit that she
had had a genuine vision. But then she was back the next day with the
newspaper, waving it under my nose and making such a scene. She said it was
there in black and white – woman found dead in mysterious circumstances – and
what was more she had had another vision that gave her the name of the man who
had killed her.”

Clara sat up straight,
fascinated despite her scepticism.

“The murderer was not named in
the papers?”

“I thought about that myself,
but no, no suspect was named. I really didn’t know what to say and she was
desperate to know if I thought she should go to the police.” Madame Delmont
looked suddenly shy and fiddled with an edge of the strange eastern costume, “I
confess I wasn’t in the best mood that day and I was feeling rather…”

Madame Delmont let out a faint
groan of regret.

“I was jealous.” She said,
“And I told her to go to the police because I knew they wouldn’t take her
seriously and she would be laughed at.”

“And did she go?” Clara asked
neutrally.

“Yes, and blow me, if they
didn’t take her seriously, but what could they do without evidence? When they
announced they could make no arrests she was livid and started telling everyone
she met the name of the murderer.”