12- Mrs. Jeffries Reveals Her Art (14 page)

“Because I wanted to wait and have a private word with James,” Helen replied. “I knew James had been invited,
you see. But Arthur met him at the front door and took him straight into the drawing room. As I didn’t wish to be rude, I went on outside. We’d been out there enjoying the fresh air for about ten minutes when Arthur and James came out. It was rather awkward. Mary wasn’t all that pleased to see James and she didn’t bother to hide it.”

“She was rude to him?”

“Hardly, Inspector. My sister is never blatantly rude. She was merely cold, distant.” Helen’s eyes flashed with resentment. “She ordered him about like he was a common servant. James was far too much a gentleman to make a scene, so he did what she asked and got that upstart American a chair. Not that the man appreciated it. He virtually snubbed him.”

“Snubbed him? How?” Witherspoon pressed. This was getting quite interesting.

“Oh, you know.” Helen shifted, her eyes narrowed angrily. “It wasn’t anything he actually said, it was the way he barely acknowledged James. For a moment, I was afraid he wasn’t even going to speak to James.”

The inspector tucked that bit of knowledge into the back of his mind. Americans were generally quite friendly. But he had other questions to ask, other ideas that needed checking. “Did you see Mr. Underhill take out his tin of peppermints?”

She hesitated for a moment, her expression thoughtful. “It’s difficult, Inspector. James did love his mints. He always had a tin or two in his pocket. I honestly can’t remember whether I saw him take them out or whether I was just so used to seeing him with them that I’m imagining I did.” Her forehead wrinkled in concentration. “He took the tin out and ate one. I remember because it was right when Mary asked him to get Mr. Modean a chair…
that’s right. He put the tin down on the table.”

Barnes looked up from his notebook. “Why didn’t he put it in his pocket?”

The Inspector nodded approvingly. Excellent question. Obviously his methods were beginning to wear off on his constable. “Yes, why didn’t he?”

“I’ve no idea, Inspector. But I remember the entire sequence of events now. James had just put a mint in his mouth when Mary asked him to get a chair for Mr. Modean. Of course, as he’s a gentleman, he complied with her request immediately and instead of putting the tin back in his inside coat pocket…”

Witherspoon interrupted. “His overcoat?”

“That’s where he generally carried them,” she replied. “But as I was saying, he simply laid them down on the table and went over to the terrace. Yes, that’s right, because I was going to remind him not to forget them when we went inside for tea.” Her voice faltered and her eyes filled with tears. To give her her due, she took a deep breath and straightened her spine. “But of course, I didn’t. I quite forgot all about the mints.”

“You’re sure the tin was still on the table when you left?” Barnes asked.

“Absolutely.”

Witherspoon asked, “Did Mr. Underhill offer them to the rest of you?”

Helen smiled uneasily, as though she were a bit embarrassed. “Well, no, not exactly. I know it sounds silly, Inspector, but everyone is entitled to one fault. James was just a bit selfish with his mints. So, no, he didn’t offer them around. He never did.”

Witherspoon glanced at Barnes and saw by the knowing expression on the constable’s face that he grasped the significance
of what Helen Collier had just told them.

“Did you see how many mints were in the tin when he opened it?” Witherspoon asked.

Helen considered the question. “No, I can’t say that I did. Is it important?”

The inspector wasn’t sure. It could be. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any way to really know. It was very possible that the mints had been poisoned while they were out on the table, or considering what Helen had told them about his habit of not offering them to others, they could have been poisoned at any time with the killer banking on the fact that Underhill never shared them with others. Drat. “It could be very important, Miss Collier. Er, this is a rather delicate question. You told us earlier that you and Mr. Underhill agreed to become engaged when you came into the house a few moments before tea. Is that correct?”

“Yes,” she said. “I told the others I had a headache from the sun and needed to lie down. But that was just an excuse for James and I to have a few moments of privacy. He escorted me inside and proposed to me. It wasn’t unexpected, Inspector,” she explained dryly. “When you get to be my age, you don’t play the simpering miss. He proposed at the foot of the staircase and I accepted. I then went upstairs to check on my appearance. We were going to announce the engagement at tea and I wanted to look my best.”

“When you say it wasn’t unexpected…” Witherspoon hesitated. This was decidedly an awkward question. “What, precisely, led you to believe Mr. Underhill was going to propose? Had he mentioned it to you?”

Helen crossed her arms over her chest. “I fail to see how that’s any of your concern.”

Witherspoon sighed inwardly. “Ma’am, I assure you,
under any other circumstances it wouldn’t be the concern of the police. However, your fiancé was poisoned.”

“Well, I didn’t do it,” she snapped.

“We’re not implying you did, ma’am,” he said hastily. “We’re merely trying to learn as much as we can about everything that happened yesterday. There appears to be some question as to whether or not your engagement was real—”

“Of course it was real,” she interrupted. “If you must know, he asked me yesterday morning.”

“Mr. Underhill was here yesterday morning?” Witherspoon exclaimed. Egads, why hadn’t someone mentioned that before?

“No, he wasn’t,” she corrected. “I went to see him.”

“You went to his house?” the inspector asked.

“To his rooms, yes.” She glanced down at the carpet and then lifted her chin defiantly. “James doesn’t have a house here in town. He has lodgings in a private home in Bayswater. It’s not that he can’t afford a home—he most certainly can. I mean, he could. But there wouldn’t be any point to it, surely. After we’d married, we were going to move to his cottage out in the country, so there wasn’t any reason for him to go to the trouble and expense of finding a house here in town,”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Witherspoon said quickly. “I quite understand.” He was amazed that rather than the woman being embarrassed about admitting she went to a gentleman’s rooms alone, she appeared to be mortified because the man she’d consented to wed lived in lodgings. “And he asked you to marry him then? What time was this?”

“It was early, just after eight in the morning. I went out right after breakfast.”

“Did his landlady see you?” Barnes asked.

“No, James was just leaving when I arrived. He was in a hurry for a business appointment. He proposed to me right then, I accepted and then we caught a hansom.”

“Together?”

“No, separately. I came home. James went on about his business.”

“Did he say where he was going?” Witherspoon asked

“As a matter of fact, he did,” she said proudly. “He was going to Soho. There was some artist or other he wanted to see.”

Mrs. Jeffries stood on the south side of the Thames Embankment staring at the Houses of Parliament across the river. Traffic on the river moved briskly, barges and flat boats, some of them so loaded with goods they rode low in the water, chugged and skimmed alongside steamers and ferries belching black smoke into the gray afternoon. Every few seconds, she cast her gaze over her shoulder, watching for her prey. She spotted him coming out of St. Thomas’s Hospital.

“Good day, Doctor,” she called gaily, waving her umbrella to get his attention.

Preoccupied, he looked around vaguely and then his face broke into a huge grin when he saw her. “Good day, Mrs. Jeffries,” he said, hurrying toward her. “I’ve been expecting you.”

“Of course you were,” she agreed with a chuckle. They were old collaborators. Dr. Bosworth frequently advised her on the inspector’s homicides. He had a way of looking at corpses that frequently shed light on the hows, whys and wherefores of the crime itself. Most of his medical colleagues didn’t share some of his rather radical views
about what one could and couldn’t learn from a dead body, but that made no difference to the good doctor. Except when he was helping Mrs. Jeffries, he kept his observations quiet around others in the medical establishment. Perhaps when he was very old and ready to retire, he’d publish the notebooks he kept on his work.

“I’m afraid I don’t have much time this afternoon,” he said apologetically as he took her arm. “I’ve an appointment at the medical school in fifteen minutes. Perhaps you’d care to walk with me? It’s just down there.” He pointed to the buildings at the other end of the hospital.

“You know why I’ve come,” she said.

“James Underhill,” he replied. “Poisoned. Cyanide in the peppermints. They were impregnated with the stuff.”

“Impregnated how?”

He steered her around a lollygagging group of young men, medical students by the look of them, and in no hurry to reach their destination. “I’m not sure. I suspect the poison was, however it was obtained, soaked in a small amount of water and then the water dropped onto the individual mints. There wasn’t much left to analyze, only the inside wrapping paper and a few granules.”

“Are you absolutely certain the poison was in the mints and not something else?” she asked. It was essential to clarify how the victim had ingested the lethal dose.

Amused by the question, Bosworth smiled. “Mrs. Jeffries, take my word for it. It was the mints. Cyanide kills so quickly that if he’d ingested it any other way, he’d have dropped dead before he had that last mint.”

She felt a bit foolish. “You’re right, of course. Silly of me to ask.”

“Not at all,” he said gallantly. “Perfectly reasonable question.”

They’d reached their destination. Mrs. Jeffries glanced at the groups of students cluttered along the walkway leading to the front door of the medical school. Dressed for the most part in thick black overcoats and stiff collared white shirts, they all looked much alike. “You’re very kind, Doctor,” she murmured. “Look at all of them.” She swept her hand at a knot of students huddled at the far end of the building. “All male. What a pity. There’s no reason at all a woman couldn’t be a physican or a surgeon.”

“I agree,” Bosworth replied with a grin. “Several of them are. It’s fairly rare, though, and they meet with a lot of resistance.”

She clucked her tongue in disgust. “One day, perhaps even in my lifetime, women will march up to this building and take their rightful place.”

“If it’s any comfort to you,” Bosworth said, “not every country is as rigid about educating women as Britain. In Pennsylvania they actually have a medical college to train women doctors. I must be off, Mrs. Jeffries. Is there anything else you needed to ask me?”

“No, but do let me know if you think of anything that might be helpful.”

“Right.” He turned toward the building then whirled back around. “I really would like you to meet an American colleague of mine who’s in town for a few days…” He paused, not quite sure how to tell her about having had to invite the inspector.

“Is it the person who Inspector Witherspoon said you wanted him to meet?” she asked sweetly.

“Yes, but I only said that because your Wiggins ran into me in your neighborhood last evening—I was on my way to see you, but I could hardly tell that to your employer,
so I said I was coming to see him. But the point is”—Bosworth blushed a fiery red—“I’d really like you to meet this man. He’s quite an expert on pathology…he’s a number of ideas about what the dead can tell us.”

Heads swiveled at Bosworth’s words. But he ignored the odd stares cast his way. “I’ll send you a note,” he called to Mrs. Jeffries as he turned and hurried into the building.

He was gone before she had a chance to say goodbye.

Betsy’s feet were freezing. She got out of the hansom at the junction of Addison Crescent and Holland Park Road. Wincing, as the pavement was cold, she told herself she’d not far to walk. But she hadn’t dared take the hansom all the way home. Wiggins or Smythe or Mrs. Goodge or
someone
would have seen and started asking why she was using a cab when it wasn’t even dark out.