Mrs. Jeffries Takes the Cake (27 page)

Mrs. Jeffries glanced at Jeremy. The lad was working on his second piece of bread. Mrs. Goodge, seeing the direction of the housekeeper’s gaze, acted quickly.

“Jeremy, boy,” she said, reaching across and patting him on the arm. “You’ve done a fine job. But we’ve a number of things to take care of now, so you’d best be off.” She got up as she spoke and made her way to the pine china hutch. “Let me wrap up this loaf of bread for ya. That way, you can take some to your sister.” She yanked open the top drawer and pulled out a big sheet of brown paper and a bit of string.

Jeremy slanted a quick, suspicious look around the table. He knew he was being shown the door, but there was nothing he could do about it. He was curious as to what was going on, but not so curious that he’d risk losing the bread by being overly bold. He watched as the cook deftly
wrapped the bread and neatly tied the package with the string.

“Ta,” he said as she handed him the wrapped loaf. “Do you want me to come by tomorrow?”

“You might as well,” she replied. “We might have somethin’ for you to do.”

With one last look around the table, he nodded and scampered out to the back door.

They all called out their good-byes as the lad left. As soon as he was gone, Mrs. Jeffries turned to the coachman. “You’ve got to get to the hospital. I think Mrs. Frommer is in terrible danger.”

Smythe started for the hall. “Wait,” she called. “Take Hatchet with you.” She turned to him. “That is, if you’re willing to go.”

“You need have no fear on that account.” Hatchet nodded at Luty as he got up and joined the coachman.

“What do ya want us to do when we get there?” Smythe asked. “There’ll be a police constable on duty. What do we tell ’im?”

“Whatever you have to, to get into Mrs. Frommer’s room,” Mrs. Jeffries ordered. “But hurry. We’ll find the inspector and get him there as soon as possible. Don’t worry; I’m sure that between the two of you, you’ll think of something to get you inside. But it’s imperative you stay with Mrs. Frommer until the inspector arrives.”

As soon as the men had left, she turned her attention on Wiggins. “Go upstairs to my sitting room,” she instructed, “and get me the cigar box from the the bottom drawer of my desk.”

Wiggins was off like a shot. Sensing the rising excitement in the air, Fred bounced after him.

“Do you know where the inspector was going after he left Mr. Burroughs’s?” she asked Mrs. Goodge.

“Well…” The cook thought hard. “Just as I was walkin’ away I thought I heard Constable Barnes sayin’ somethin’ about the Frommer house, but I couldn’t hear exactly what. Why? What are we goin’ to do?”

“We’ve got to find the inspector,” Mrs. Jeffries said, “and we’ve got to get him to the hospital.”

“Knowing you, I expect you’ve got a plan,” Luty said gleefully. “Goody. I’m itchin’ to git out and about.”

Wiggins dashed into the room. “’Ere you are,” he said, sliding the box on the table. “What now?”

Mrs. Jeffries flipped open the lid, reached inside and pulled out her supplies one by one. A bottle of black ink, cheap writing paper and a pen. “I’m going to write several notes,” she said. “One for each of us. We don’t know where the inspector might be, so we’ve all got to go out, so to speak, and find the fellow.”

“Even me?” Mrs. Goodge asked.

Mrs. Jeffries stared at her for a moment. “I thought that after this morning you might like getting out and about as the rest of us do. Don’t you want to go?”

“To be perfectly honest, Mrs. Jeffries”—the cook sighed—“this mornin’ was a bit of an emergency, at least to my way of thinkin’. If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to stay here and keep my eye on things. Wouldn’t want to start any bad habits now, would we? Out and about is good for them that likes it, but for some of us, stayin’ close to our kitchens is what’s important.”

Mrs. Jeffries smiled. “I think that’s a fine idea. As a matter of fact, we do need someone here. Just in case the inspector comes back. But you’ll need a note all the same.”

“What are these notes goin’ to say?” Luty asked.

“They’ll all say the same thing.” She took the cap off
the ink bottle. “And naturally, I’ll disguise my handwriting.”

For several minutes she worked in silence, concentrating on making her handiwork as authentic as possible. Bad spelling, poor grammar and barely legible handwriting. When she finished the first one, she held it up, studying it critically.

“I think this will do nicely,” she said. “Now, to make one for each of us.” She pulled another sheet of cheap paper out of the box. “Each of us will have one. Betsy, you’ll take yours to the station, in case he or the constable comes there.”

“I’m to tell him what,” Betsy asked, “that a lad showed up at the house with this note?”

“Precisely. But please, all of you, use your own judgment and take care who you show either yourselves or the note to.”

“In other words, ask if the inspector’s about before we bring out the paper, right?” Luty said.

“Right. It doesn’t matter so much if the inspector hears that five different people from his household were looking for him. We can always say we enlisted all of you to help locate him when the note arrived.” She finished writing and slipped the note across to Betsy. Then she started the next one. “But it is imperative that he doesn’t hear that each of us had a note with us. I think you all get my meaning. You show the note only to Inspector Witherspoon, no one else.”

“You want us to keep our mouths shut and use our ’eads, right?” Wiggins said bluntly.

“Excellent, Wiggins, I knew you’d understand precisely. We’ll all meet back here later this afternoon and see how we’ve done.”

“Hurry, man, hurry,” Hatchet yelled at the coachman through the window. “A life may be at stake.”

Deacon Dickson, Luty’s coachman, took the butler at his word and urged the horses onward. The coach careened around the corner, cutting it close and narrowly missing a letter box.

“He’s goin’ pretty ruddy fast,” Smythe muttered darkly. In truth, the only person he trusted to drive this fast was himself. “I’d like to get there in one piece.”

“Never fear,” Hatchet said calmly. “Our coachman is an expert. He’s fairly useless at anything else, but at driving a coach, no one can beat him.”

Smythe, looking worried, stuck his head out the window as the coach rushed past slower traffic, veering dangerously around coopers vans and hansoms. Up ahead, he could see the entrance to the Royal Free Hospital.

“We’re almost there,” he called, more to calm himself than to give any information to Hatchet, who was looking out the other window. Throughout the ride, he’d been trying to think of a way to get them into Mrs. Frommer’s room.

A lot of the police constables knew him by sight; he’d been with the inspector often enough. But what if there was one on that didn’t know him? If the inspector had left instructions that the lady wasn’t to be disturbed, then how could he and Hatchet get inside? How could the killer get inside? he wondered. But he already knew the answer to that. Desperate people could be bloody resourceful and
this man had murdered twice. He was ruddy desperate by now.

The coach pulled up in front of the hospital and Hatchet and Smythe leapt out before it even came to a full stop. Ignoring the startled glances of pedestrians, patients and nursing sisters, they ran for the huge double front door. Smythe reached it first. He yanked it open and they charged inside. They skidded to a halt in front of the reception desk.

The sister behind the desk studied them with a disapproving expression on her face. “Please do not run in hospital.”

Hatchet stepped forward. He doffed his hat and bowed politely to the woman. “I’m terribly sorry, ma’am, we certainly didn’t mean to disturb the peace of your fine establishment. But we’re in rather a hurry. Would you be so kind as to direct me to the room of Mrs. Andrew Frommer? It’s most urgent we get there quickly. We’ve message for the police constable from his superior, Inspector Witherspoon.”

The sister eyed him suspiciously, apparently, still annoyed at their heathen manners. Finally she said, “Mrs. Frommer is down the hall. It’s on the left at the first corridor. She’s in room number twenty-nine. But please don’t run. The constable’s gone to get something to eat and won’t be back for a half hour or so. Another policeman came along a few moments ago to relieve him.”

Smythe stepped forward. “Was this copper wearin’ a uniform?”

“He was in plain clothes,” she replied.

Smythe spun on his heel and charged down the hall, Hatchet hot on his heels.

“I told you not to run,” the sister shouted after them, but they ignored her and kept going. Smythe swung
around the corner and leapt to his left to avoid crashing into a man on crutches.

“Watch we’re you’re goin’, mate,” the man snarled, and then broke off as he flattened himself against the wall to avoid the other gent that come crashing around the corner.

They hurtled down the hall. Smythe scanned the numbers on the top of the rooms as he went. Dodging gurneys, patients, doctors and instrument carts, he ran as fast as he could, oblivious to the yelps and protests coming from behind him.

Twenty-three…twenty-six…twenty-eight…His heart was in his throat as he finally reached number twenty-nine. Grabbing the doorknob, he yanked it open and flew into room.

Directly across from him, a cranelike man stood over MaryAnne Frommer’s bed. He was holding a pillow over her face.

The man looked up, an expression of surprise on his face. Smythe leapt at him, but the man dropped the pillow and scurried to the end of the bed, only to run flat into Hatchet, who grabbed him by the arm.

“Here now, you blackguard,” the butler yelled as he jerked him around to the other side of the bed. Incensed because he too had caught a glimpse of what the fiend had been doing. “You’ll hang for this.”

“Watch out.” Smythe called out a warning, but it was too late. The bastard used his free arm to pull a derringer out of his coat pocket. “He’s got a gun.”

“And it’s aimed right at your heart,” Henry Alladyce snarled. He shoved the gun against Hatchet’s chest. “Now let me go.”

Hatchet released the man’s arm.

“I don’t know who you are,” Alladyce snapped, “but get the hell out of my way.”

With a fast, worried glance at the woman on the bed, Hatchet raised his hands and stepped away. Alladyce, a mad expression on his face, kept the gun leveled in the direction of the two men, backed toward the door…

…and collided straight into Constable Barnes. Who whacked him lightly on the back of his head with his policeman’s baton.

Alladyce moaned, dropped the gun and fell to his knees.

Hatchet dived for the weapon as it hit the ground. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when it didn’t go off.

Smythe leaned toward Mrs. Frommer as the inspector rushed toward the bed. “Goodness, what’s happened? Did he try and kill her?”

“He was smotherin’ ’er with a pillow when we walked in,” Smythe said. “Then he pulled a gun on us and threatened to shoot Hatchet.”

The doctor, followed by a nursing sister, hurried into the room as Constable Barnes hauled Henry Alladyce to his feet.

As the doctor tended to his patient Witherspoon walked over to Alladyce. “Henry Alladyce, you’re under arrest for the murder of Roland Ashbury and the attempted murder of MaryAnne Frommer.”

Several hours later all of the staff plus Luty and Hatchet gathered back at Upper Edmonton Gardens. They’d discovered that none of them had had to use their notes. The inspector, in one of those strange quirks of fate, had gone back to the hospital of his own volition.

“Odd, weren’t it,” Betsy said as she poured herself tea, “him going back there on his own?”

“He said he had a feeling,” Mrs. Jeffries said calmly, “that he ought to. I, for one, am most grateful he arrived when he did. If Constable Barnes hadn’t been able to stop Alladyce—” She broke off and shuddered. “Well, we might have had several dead bodies in that hospital room.”

“I don’t believe he’d have actually shot me, Mrs. Jeffries,” Hatchet said thoughtfully. “I think at that point he just wanted to escape. He was quite surprised to see us. But of course, as soon as we came into the room, his plan was ruined.”