12- Mrs. Jeffries Reveals Her Art (18 page)

“I’m not lookin’ for a position,” he said. She was quite a pretty girl. Her hair, neatly plaited and tucked up under her maid’s cap, was a lovely shade of brown, her eyes green and her skin, nicely flushed from the steam rising from the sink, a creamy shade of ivory. “I’m lookin’ for someone.”

“You’d best go round to the back door,” she said, jerking her head toward the back garden. “The butler’ll help you.”

“I thought I was at the back door,” Wiggins said. “I tried the one on the other side but it was locked tight.”

“Not the side door.” She shook her head. “That one’s never used. There’s a big door right round the back. It leads straight into the hall and the butler’s pantry.”

Shifting to one side, he deliberately brushed the brown paper wrapping of the parcel in his arms against the open
door, drawing the girl’s attention to it. “Can’t you ’elp me?” he complained. “This is awfully ’eavy.” He looked down at the package. “I’m lookin’ for a…” He squinted, pretending he couldn’t read the label.”

“Well, who you looking for?” she demanded.

Helplessly, he glanced back up at her. “I can’t read the blasted name. It’s rubbed off the paper. What are the names of the girls that work ’ere?”

“My name’s Cora,” she began, “and there’s a Rose and an Edith.”

“That’s it,” he cried. “The one this is for! It’s for you.” As he’d doctored the name on the paper himself, he was quite sure that even if she could read, she’d not see through his ruse.

“What is it?” she asked suspiciously. But she took her arms out of the sink and reached for a tea towel. “And who’d be sending me somethin’?”

“I think it’s from yer secret admirer,” Wiggins said. “A feller paid me to bring it ’ere and gave me strict instructions not to give it to anyone but Cora.”

Flattered, she broke into a huge smile. But she sobered instantly as she glanced at another closed door on the far side of the room. Through there was the kitchen. “I don’t know.” She hesitated. “This is a right strict house. I’ll get into trouble if I accept presents. You know how some people are about a girl havin’ ‘followers.’”

“But I think this is a nice tin of sweets,” he persisted. “It’d be a shame to let ’em go to waste. Besides, the feller’ll box me ears if I don’t give it to ya.”

She bit her lip in an agony of indecision. Then she brightened suddenly. “It’s my afternoon out today. Can I meet ya somewhere? Then ya can give me the package?”

Wiggins pretended to consider the idea. But as he already
knew from his chatting up the baker’s delivery boy earlier today that it was some of the staff’s day out today, he thanked his lucky stars he’d stumbled onto a girl who was going to be of some use to him. What he was doing wasn’t very nice, pretending that this poor girl had a secret admirer and all, but it wasn’t so awful either. And she would be getting a nice box of chocolates in the bargain. “Well, I don’t rightly know. I’m busy, ya see…but still, ya look like a nice girl.” He smiled brightly. “All right, then. Where do ya want me to meet you?”

“Do you know the Addison Station? It’s just up the road a ways.” Another worried glance at the kitchen. “I’ll be there at half past two. Is that all right with you?”

Unable to believe his good luck, Wiggins nodded. “See ya then,” he promised.

Wiggins spent the time before he was to meet Cora talking to the shopkeepers in the neighborhood. Chatting them up wasn’t risky at all. Everyone in the neighborhood was talking about the murder and everyone had an opinion about it too.

“Well, we weren’t at all surprised there was murder done there,” the stout shopkeeper said, jerking her head in the direction of the Grant house. “Mind you, my first thought was that it was probably some poor, honest merchant trying to collect his money. But of course, it wasn’t, was it? It was some artist fellow or some such nonsense.” She snorted in disgust. “Just like the Grants, isn’t it? Always puttin’ on airs and actin’ like gentry. Well, I say gentry pays their bills. But they’ve not paid us what they owe, have they, Bert?” she yelled to a skinny man who was busy refilling the potato bins. “All toffee-nosed she is too, that Mrs. Grant. Not at all like her sister, Miss Collier. She’s a nice one, she is. But that Mrs. Grant, she’s
no better than she ought to be, is she, Bert?” Bert didn’t appear to feel it necessary to answer his wife’s questions. He picked up a basket of cabbages and began plopping them into the bin next to the spuds.

“Do you know she actually had the nerve to come in here and have a go at me because I refused to send any more vegetables to the house?” the shopkeeper continued. “The nerve of the woman.”

“Really?” Wiggins pretended to be shocked.

“Well, I told her she had to pay her bill, didn’t I, Bert? But did she? Oh no, too good to pay the likes of us, isn’t she?”

“Maybe she didn’t have the money,” Wiggins suggested, more to keep the greengrocer talking than for anything else.

She scoffed. “Don’t be daft, boy. The likes of her always has money. She’s got enough to be out flouncing about in hansom cabs and toing and froing with all them fancy pictures she and her husband collect. Well, I say let ’em sell a few of them off and pay her bills. That’s what I say, don’t I, Bert?”

Wiggins’s ears pricked. “When did you see Mrs. Grant out in a hansom?”

The woman pursed her lips, her round face creased in concentration. “It was the day that poor bloke got poisoned.” She leaned closer and poked him in the chest with one short, sausage-shaped finger. “That very morning, in fact. Isn’t that so, Bert?”

“What do you think, sir?” Barnes asked the inspector as they climbed the carpeted stairs to the second floor of the hotel. Mrs. Modean, after bringing herself under control, had gone upstairs a few moments earlier. It had been tacitly
understood that none of them would allude to the earlier meeting.

Witherspoon winced visibly. “I don’t quite know what to think,” he admitted. “She certainly had a motive for wanting Underhill dead.”

“But she claims she was going to pay him off,” Barnes commented. “If she was going to pay him, why would she kill him? It’s not like he could blackmail her indefinitely. She and her husband are going back to San Francisco soon and Underhill knew that.”

“We only have her word that she was going to pay.” Witherspoon gulped air into his lungs as they reached the top of the stairs. “And, of course, it’s one thing to say it—it’s quite another to actually have the money to do it.”

“But she’s rich.”

“Her husband’s rich,” the inspector corrected. “For all we know, she has to account for every penny she spends.”

They walked briskly down the hall, their footsteps making little noise against the thick maroon carpet.

“There it is.” Barnes pointed to the door of room number twenty-two, then walked over and rapped lightly on the glossy wood.

From inside, they heard the soft murmur of voices. A second later Tyrell Modean, his lean, handsome face somber but not unfriendly, opened the door wide. “Good day, gentlemen,” he said in his soft American drawl. “Come in. We’ve been expecting you.” He moved back and ushered them into an elegant sitting room.

Lydia Modean, as composed as the Queen herself, sat on a cream-and-maroon striped settee next to the fireplace on the other side of the large room. “Hello, Inspector, Constable,” she said politely.

“Good day, madam,” Witherspoon replied, impressed by her composure. Barnes nodded.

“Please sit down,” she said, pointing to a matching love seat and pair of chairs opposite the settee. “There’s no reason we can’t be civilized about this.”

“We’re only going to be asking you a few questions,” the inspector said. “I don’t think we’ll be taking up too much of your time.”

“That’s very good of you, sir.” Modean sat down on the settee next to his wife. He took her hand. “But we’re prepared to give you as much time as you need. I apologize for not being here yesterday, but we had some rather important things to do. But you’re not interested in my personal business, Inspector, and I’ll get right to the point. I’ll admit straight out that I didn’t have much liking for James Underhill, but he didn’t deserve to die like that.”

“No one deserves to be murdered, sir,” Witherspoon agreed. “Now, I know you’ve given us a statement already, but I’ve a few more details I’d like clarified. Was Mr. Underhill present when you arrived at the Grant house?”

Tyrell thought about it for a moment. He looked at his wife. “I don’t remember seeing him, do you?” She shook her head negatively. “I think our answer has to be no, Inspector,” he said, “unless he was there and in another room.”

Witherspoon expected that reply. But he’d wanted to ask anyway. Sometimes asking obvious questions got surprising answers. “Do you recall what time Mr. Underhill did arrive?”

“Not really.” Tyrell let go of his wife’s hand and crossed his arms over his chest. “I was probably in the
study with Neville Grant and I think Lydia had already gone outside with Mrs. Grant.”

“How long were you in Mr. Grant’s study?” Barnes asked.

“No more than ten minutes, when we went out to the garden. James Underhill was there with Arthur Grant. But I had the impression they’d only just arrived.”

Barnes, who’d brought out his notebook, flipped back a few pages. “When you were in Mr. Grant’s study, did you hear anyone coming in the front door?”

Modean looked surprised by the question. “Not that I recall,” he began. “Why?”

“Because, sir”—Barnes frowned at his own handwriting—“according to the servants, no one remembers letting James Underhill in that afternoon.”

“You mean he didn’t come in with Arthur Grant?” Lydia asked.

“Arthur Grant was home that afternoon,” Witherspoon replied. “He’d been up in his room since lunch, sleeping. He remembers hearing the door knocker twice. Once, earlier in the afternoon, when a police constable arrived asking for the whereabouts of a young woman, and again when the two of you arrived.”

“I’m afraid I’m very confused,” Lydia said. “Are you saying a police constable was at the Grant house before Underhill was murdered?”

The inspector had no idea why he was telling them this bit of information. There was no evidence whatsoever that the alleged disappearance of Irene Simmons had anything to do with James Underhill’s murder. But evidence or not, as his housekeeper had pointed out that morning at breakfast, a murder and a disappearance at the same house in the same week was stretching coincidence a bit too far.
Besides, his conscience had been bothering him something terrible about that young woman. Since Underhill’s murder, he’d completely pushed it to the back of his mind. Witherspoon wondered if he ought to speak so freely in front of what were possible suspects. At least in the Underhill matter. “Before I answer that,” he said to them, “I need to ask you a question. Where were you a week ago yesterday? Around six o’clock in the evening.”

Modean’s jaw gaped. “Where were we?”

“That’s right.” He nodded encouragingly. “Were you here in London?”

“We were in Bristol,” Lydia answered. “I don’t have much family left, but there were a few people I wanted to see while I was here. You can check with the manager of the hotel. It was the Great Western Hotel. Inspector, could you please tell us what’s going on?”

Witherspoon felt much better. If the Modeans were telling the truth, and he could find that out quickly enough, it meant they couldn’t have had anything to do with Irene Simmons’s disappearance. They weren’t even in London when it was alleged to have taken place.

“I’m sorry to be so mysterious,” he said. “But the reason I happened to be ‘on the scene’ so quickly the afternoon that Mr. Underhill was murdered is because I was on my way to the Grant house. You see, we’ve had a report that a young woman has gone missing. The last place where she was supposed to have gone was the Grants’.”

Lydia and Tyrell looked at each other in disbelief. Finally, Tyrell asked, “Was this young woman a friend of the family?”

“No, actually, no one in the Grant house seems to have heard of her,” he replied. “And all of them, including the
servants, insist she was never there that evening.”

“You think this woman’s disappearance has something to do with the murder, don’t you?” Lydia guessed. “That’s why you asked us where we were last week.”

“I’m afraid so,” the inspector replied. “But the two events may not have anything to do with one another.”

“That would be a pretty strange coincidence, don’t you think?” Tyrell drawled.

“It would indeed,” Witherspoon agreed quickly. “And though I know coincidences do happen, in this case, I feel the two events are connected.”

“She was a model, wasn’t she?” Lydia said.

Surprised, the inspector raised his eyebrows. “How did you know that, ma’am?”

She smiled knowingly. “It wasn’t at all hard to figure out, Inspector. As a matter of fact, if I were a gambler, I’d wager that she went there after receiving a note promising her work. What’s more, I know who sent her that note.”

“Lydia,” Tyrell warned. “Be careful of what you say. These men are policemen. I don’t want them to get the wrong impression.”

“Please, Mr. Modean,” Witherspoon ordered. “Do let your wife finish.” He looked at her. “Go on, please. A young woman’s life may very well be at stake here.” He turned to look at her. “Who sent her the note?”