by Bettie Jane
He looked around and there were no other coppers nearby to have overheard. “Come with me. I’ll deny I’ve let you if you tell anyone.”
“Why, Inspector, I’m a woman of integrity. I never reveal my sources, you’ll recall.” She winked at him then chided herself, remembering that she was at a crime scene.
Get a hold of yourself, Julia Barlow.
Gibbs led Julia into Philip’s study and let her look around at the files on his desk. The handwriting, at first glance, didn’t match.
She was disappointed but not very surprised. His corpse lying in the next room was fair proof that he wasn’t the killer.
Inspector Gibbs was speaking with another officer in the hall, so Julia kept snooping, hoping to find something to clear her friends’ names.
There was a file on his desk that caught Julia’s eye. She saw the surname Sutton written on it. She tried to stay casual as she opened it up and flipped through it, wondering if Philip had any business of note with Frankie’s father.
She quickly skimmed through the file, her heart sinking with every page. The Sutton family was ruined. They were completely out of money. It seemed they’d wagered everything on the deal between Sidney Guinness and Philip Withers. When Sidney backed out, the Suttons lost everything.
What have you done, Frankie?
She stuffed the file in her bag so she could look at it in more detail later, and she wasn’t willing to tell the Inspector about it yet. Her friends were in enough trouble as it was. It seemed to Julia that the harder she worked to clear her friend’s names, the bigger the hole she dug for all of them.
Inspector Gibbs finished his conversation in the hall and re-entered the room.
Julia had wandered across the room to a bookshelf with several volumes of matching leather-bound books. She picked one up and opened it and saw that it was a woman’s handwriting…it appeared to be Eliza’s diaries. The one in her hand was from years ago. She picked through each journal to determine dates and noticed that at the end of the row, there was a dust line where there had obviously been at least one other journal, if not two.
“Lady Eliza kept a diary, Inspector. It looks as though the most recent two are missing. Perhaps the killer took them because they contained incriminating evidence. If we could find those journals, we might have evidence of what was truly going on with Lady Eliza and her lovers. I’m assuming she had more than one. I don’t necessarily put a lot of stock in rumors, but where there is smoke, sometimes there is an actual flame.”
“Very good work, Julia. Your powers of deduction are—”
“Quite ordinary, I’m sure. Thank you for the compliment. Sometimes I fancy myself a private detective but my father would never allow it. Working for the paper was enough to nearly put him into the grave.”
He laughed and she enjoyed the sound very much.
“I compared the writing,” Julia said and walked over to Philip’s desk. She held the note side by side with a document on Philip’s desk to show him. “Not a match, though I suppose that’s fairly obvious.”
He peered over her shoulder and she tried to ignore the sensation it gave her to feel his warm breath on her neck. She cleared her throat and maneuvered away from him.
He stepped back, seeming to pick up on her body language. “We can do a handwriting analysis on both a sample of writing known to be Philip’s and the letter your friend received. That will prove conclusively one way or another, although it does seem relatively straightforward to me that they are not a match. As far as my investigation is concerned, unless I hear otherwise from forensics I’ll focus my investigation elsewhere. If you’d like to follow me to the station, I’ll release Jimmie. I’m certain you’ll be happy to see him.”
There was a hint of a question about the nature of her association in the words that were not spoken, but she pretended not to notice.
“Yes, that would be wonderful, Inspector. Thank you for your kindness today. It seems you’ve done two favors for me in one day.”
“You’d do the same, I’m sure.”
“Naturally.” She felt a bit of guilt knowing that there were some things she was holding back but justified it by reminding herself that a lot of things that she “knew” were simply only hunches based on incoherent pieces of information. When she had something concrete, she’d share it with the inspector. Probably.
On her drive to the station, she brainstormed ways to find Oscar and kept coming up empty. Maybe Jimmie would have some suggestions. She was certainly glad he’d be rejoining her. She loved bouncing her theories off of him.
When he was released, she greeted him with a warm embrace. “Good to see you on this side of the window, old friend.”
“It’s good to be here, as well. What’s new, Julia? What developments have occurred? They didn’t tell me why they were letting me out. Did they find the murderer?”
“It’s a long story. Let’s get a drink at the Candlelight and I’ll get you all caught up. You might be sorry you asked.”
They said goodbye to the Inspector and made their way to Julia’s auto.
Chapter 8
Sunday Evening
November 13, 1921
Candlelight Club
West End, London
“I need a strong drink, Jimmie, and not gin tonight. I better go straight to bourbon. You?”
“I’ll have what you’re having.”
Julia ordered at the bar and Jimmie found a table for them in a quiet corner. It was Sunday night, rather late, with only a single singer crooning a slow jazz tune in the dimly lit club. Perfect for chatting.
She sat down and chugged her whiskey. Her eyes watered from the burn. “Yowzers. That’s some strong stuff.”
“Yeah, bourbon isn’t exactly meant to drink that quickly. I imagine you’ll be feeling the effects of that very soon.”
“Very good. That is quite the point, Jimmie. It’s been a rough couple days.”
He raised a sarcastic eyebrow. “Has it now?”
She laughed, catching his drift. “Well, I suppose it was no picnic for you either, but when I tell you about the last 24 hours, you’ll be downing your drink just as fast.”
“That bad, was it? Let’s hear it.”
“Lord Philip Withers is dead, found strangled today in his home. Oscar is still missing, Opal fell to pieces but then recovered slightly and told me that Oscar confided in her that he’d been involved in an ongoing affair with Eliza.”
Jimmie paled and downed his drink. “You’re serious?”
“Afraid so.”
“Okay, you were right about the bourbon. Keep going.”
“Mattie was acting strange, so I cornered her about where she’d heard the news that Eliza was pregnant. She’d claimed to have heard it from Dolly Wilde, but Dolly has been in Paris for a month. When pressed, Mattie admitted that she’d received an anonymous letter claiming that you were having an affair with Eliza and were the father of her baby.”
“Lord have mercy, Julia.”
“I compared the handwriting on the note with Philip Withers’. It doesn’t match. The Inspector will do a handwriting analysis, but it is fairly obvious to see with the naked eye that the penmanship isn’t the same. If Philip didn’t write the letter, he likely didn’t phone in the anonymous tip to the police prompting your arrest. I wish I still had the letter in my position so you could see if it looked familiar. I haven’t seen Frankie or Oscar’s handwriting in quite a long time. School was ages ago.”
He simply stared at her, waiting for her to go on.
“It gets worse. You remember seeing Frankie in possession of Eliza’s ring. What we didn’t know until today—I’ve just uncovered it within the last several hours in fact—is that Frankie’s family invested all their money in the deal between Philip and Sidney Guinness. When that deal fell apart, they lost everything. Frankie is broke, in possession of the ring, and he was the one that put together our treasure hunt in the first place. Mattie confided in Frankie after she got the
letter—she was distraught over having lost you—”
“She never had me!” Jimmie ran his fingers through his still unwashed, jailhouse hair. “I need another drink. I’ll go this time.”
Julia watched him go to the bar, his shoulders slumped. She knew he’d take the news of Frankie’s and Oscar’s involvement badly.
He returned and this time they both sipped at their second drink. “Is there more?” Jimmie asked.
Julia nodded, her mouth full of bourbon.
She set her drink down and sucked in a deep breath in reaction to the strong liquor.
“Frankie told Mattie that they were going to take the ring from Eliza—supposedly in good fun—and then sell it back to Eliza for a ransom for an amount of money that would have been nothing to the Withers but would have meant everything to Frankie. That night in the park, when Mattie found the body…she said she came upon Frankie standing over Eliza and removing her ring. You’ll remember that it was removed quite roughly. She kept hidden and as far as we know, he still is not aware that she saw him. She’s been a wreck since that night, afraid to say anything to anyone for fear that she’d meet the same fate as Eliza.”
“It’s Frankie, Julia. You know him as well as I do. He’s not capable of it. He couldn’t be.”
“I quite agree with you, but people will do desperate things in desperate times. His family lost everything.”
Jimmie closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair, squeezing the bridge of his nose.
“And Oscar? You said he is still missing? He seems to have all the motive in the world then, as well as Frankie. Is that what you are saying? Do you believe he is on the run?”
“I don’t know. I wish I did. And I haven’t seen Cecil at all today. You mentioned yesterday that he was going to ask around about Oscar?”
“That’s what he said. Where’s Frankie? Have you asked him about any of this?”
“Not yet. I stopped by his house earlier today but he wasn’t there. Besides, I only just found out about his family’s money problems tonight. I wasn’t able to convince myself that Frankie was truly capable of this, but once I saw Philip’s ledgers I got a sick feeling in my stomach. Remember also that until Philip’s body was discovered this afternoon, I was utterly convinced that he was behind it all.”
“So your main suspect is who then? They can’t have both killed Eliza and Philip. Could they?” Jimmie asked.
Julie answered with another question. “What do you suppose would happen if Frankie did kill Eliza not knowing anything about Oscar’s relationship with her—?”
Jimmie finished her thought for her. “What if Oscar reacted badly when he found out that Frankie had killed his lover and unborn child? Bloody hell, Julia.”
“It’s possible, isn’t it? That Oscar’s done something to Frankie or Frankie to Oscar. Where the hell is Cecil? We need to find one of them or all of them. One other thing, Eliza kept diaries. The most recent in her matching collection of leather-bound journals appears to have been stolen from Philip’s study when he was murdered earlier today. I believe there is something contained in those journals that would help us. Philip was strangled with a red poppy-adorned garroting wire—which is why they released you. You couldn’t have killed Philip while incarcerated and the method of murder was the same as with Eliza. We still have the red poppy connection. We don’t yet know if there was some connection to the war for the killer or if that was just done to throw us off the trail.”
She downed the last of her bourbon. “I feel as if the solution is so close I can practically touch it, but there’s enough I don’t know. Just a small enough piece of the puzzle that I can’t seem to solve.”
“We’ll find more out when we find Cecil and Oscar and Frankie. That must be our first—next—order of business, don’t you suppose?”
Julia agreed. “Any ideas where they might be?”
“We’ll need to search Soho again. This is Oscar and Cecil that we are talking about. I know of a few spots where they could be. First, I say we check their houses again. I need to see Frankie with my own eyes and hear his side of the story.”
“Agreed. I’ll drive.”
“After you, Detective Barlow.”
______
Sunday Night
November 13, 1921
Goodall Residence
Mayfair, London
There was no sign of Oscar at the Goodall residence. Julia even talked Jimmie into checking out the root cellar in case he’d been hiding there. It was a long shot, but she was following every possible avenue at this point. Frankie, Cecil, and Oscar needed to be found before anyone else got hurt. He wasn’t there, as she’d imagined already, but she felt better that she’d at least tried.
If Julia thought too much about the reason they were searching for her friends, it quickly became overwhelming. If she’d had to pick which one was guilty of murder, who would she pick? They were a charming trio of handsome men and her heart would break whichever turned out to be the culprit.
Next stop was Cecil’s home. Jimmie convinced the butler to let him in, but there was no sign of him either. The butler hadn’t heard or seen from him since the day before.
Julia and Jimmie felt dejected when they left Cecil’s and headed for Frankie’s house.
Jimmie vocalized his frustration. “What do you suppose has become of them? Three young men don’t just disappear from London. They must be here somewhere.”
“If we don’t find Frankie at home, we’ll go back to Piccadilly and then Soho. We’ll find them, Jimmie. We have to.”
“Of course, you’re right. I should like to arrange to wash the smell of the jailhouse off of me.”
“You do have a certain odor about you, darling. It’s a good thing I’m fond of you.”
Their light banter was the best thing about their duo. Even in stressful situations, they kept each other calm. She thought again about how grateful she was to have Jimmie by her side again.
Especially as she approached Frankie’s door and memories of what Mattie had seen flooded her brain. She’d seen Frankie pull the ring off Eliza’s finger and Julia had seen for herself the condition of that finger. He hadn’t been gentle about it at all. If Mattie was telling the truth, and Julia thought she had a decent read on her, then Frankie was at least capable of mutilating a freshly dead corpse. She shivered at the thought and then squared her shoulders, ready to face whatever was coming. Frankie was her friend. Whatever he was guilty of, he wouldn’t hurt her. She hoped.
The house was dark and there wasn’t a butler around to answer the door, evidence of Julia’s discovery of their family having lost everything. They’d even let their staff go.
“Come around back,” Jimmie said. “I can get us in through the garage. Frankie and I used to sneak out this way all the time. It was quite fun.” His words didn’t match the sullen, almost grieving tones that Julia heard in his voice. Her heart ached for Jimmie. This was going to be hardest on him. He’d been boyhood friends with Frankie. The two of them were probably the closest of all the boys. Frankie had stuck to Jimmie like glue when Jimmie’s older brother died in the war.”
The red poppies.
Julia made an alarming connection when she thought of Jimmie’s brother in the war. Frankie had a brother lost in the war, too, which is why he was such a wonderful support to Jimmie.
One more possible connection to Frankie in the clues Julia had gathered so far.
Frankie, Julia thought to herself, if you break Jimmie’s heart, I’ll never forgive you.
Jimmie led them through the garage and inside the house, calling for Frankie.
“Frankie, it’s me, Jimmie and Julia. We’re checking on you, brother. We haven’t heard from you in a bit. Frankie?”
They shouted their way through the house, both of them somehow feeling better about announcing themselves. The house was quiet, and Julia’s memory of Eliza’s strangled body was the only thought she could summon as they wound their way through the great halls of
the eerily empty home. Julia turned on lights as they went, attempting to banish the darkness.
As they approached the closed doors to the study, there was a light that shone from under the door. Julia tapped Jimmie and signaled toward the door to make sure he saw it. He nodded.
“Frankie, old chap. It’s me, Jimmie and Julia.”
He eased open the door and saw Frankie face down on the desk, an empty bottle of whiskey on his desk.
“Is he—is he alive,” Julia asked, refusing to give in to the urge to hide behind Jimmie as they approached the desk.
Frankie let out an earsplitting snore and Julia jumped in spite of herself. “Dammit, Frankie.”
“I’d say he’s alive. Drunk as a skunk, but alive. I’ll be right back.”
Jimmie left the room and when he returned he had an ice bucket filled with water. Without ceremony he dumped it over Frankie’s head, who returned to a conscious state immediately with a yelp of surprise.
“What the—”
He broke off before a curse could come out when he saw Julia. “Sorry, Julia.”
Julia thought it ironic that they were here thinking he’d committed murder and he apologized for almost cursing in front of a lady. That didn’t quite paint the picture of a cold-blooded, two-time murderer.
“Come to, Frankie. We’ve got some questions for you.”
Frankie rubbed his bleary eyes, water dripping from his hair, down his stubbly cheeks and onto his shoulders. Julia would have laughed under different circumstances.
Julia decided to lead with a relatively harmless question. “Do you know where Oscar and Cecil are? We’ve been looking for them—and you—since yesterday.”
“I haven’t seen them since I saw Oscar at your brunch, Julia. I haven’t seen Cecil since Hyde Park.”
“Speaking of Hyde Park, Frankie,” she heard her voice change to something more serious and he stiffened, hearing it too. “Mattie saw you, Frankie.”
