“I’ve had Lily and Preswick getting to know the servants and listening for anything that they might have seen or heard and are too frightened to tell.
“I talked to Sheffield. He explained what he’d been doing. I believe him.” She held up both hands as if to ward him off. “But I haven’t ruled him out.”
She stopped to take a breath and to think. She’d gotten carried away. And she still hadn’t told him about her theft of Perry’s wastepaper basket. She’d been trying to protect Maud, but for all she knew, the Jeffrey twins could be cold-blooded killers and not the silly naïve girls they appeared.
“I…” She braced herself. “I found two interesting scraps of paper in Perry’s wastepaper basket.”
“What?” he exploded.
“Shh. I was trying to protect a young lady’s reputation and inadvertently discovered something else, which I would have told you but we all came out here and you were nowhere to be found.”
“Uh-huh. And what were these tidbits?”
“One was the corner of what Preswick says is a stock ticker tape. The other was a crumpled newspaper article about the War Department’s test of spy balloons.”
“And?”
At last, he seemed interested. “The War Department has been testing those balloons all week. Tomorrow’s exhibition isn’t just a festive day for spectators.”
“How do you know this?”
“I saw them when I was at Holly Farm. Bobby said they’d be at it all week.”
“And how do you see this as being important in this investigation?”
“Simple, Detective Sergeant. Godfrey, Perry, and lots of money. The War Department needs steel.”
“That’s a lot of supposition from a newspaper article.”
But she’d heard the shift in his voice. He was actually listening.
“And the scrap of stock. I don’t know how that fits. Sheffield says Perry embezzled the company funds and they’re about to go under. He also said Perry used it to buy stock in another company in competition for a government contract for steel.”
Atkins blew out breath.
“And rumor has it that company is worthless, now that J.P. Morgan has bought out some Tennessee company and has secured the monopoly on steel.”
“So someone is in possession of a lot of money or a lot of worthless paper.”
“Exactly. But who?”
“Amazing.”
“What is?”
“You, Lady Dunbridge. I don’t know how you do this, but it’s further than I’ve been able to get.”
“Because you play by the rules. Actually so do I, but it’s a different set of rules.”
“I think I prefer mine.”
“But you have to admit, in some instances, mine will allow me to get the job done.”
“I could get in a whole lot of trouble.”
She smiled. “My dear Detective Sergeant, my guess is, it isn’t a state totally unknown to you.”
He laughed in spite of himself. “You are…”
“Anxious to catch a killer. Let us go.”
Godfrey was waiting for them when they reentered the hallway. He didn’t seem at all surprised to find them coming out from behind the stairs. “I’ve asked Tillis to hold dinner for a half hour. I thought you would want to get out of those wet clothes before you dined.”
He turned to Atkins. “Alas I am unable—”
“I will need to see the maid’s room,” Atkins said, cutting off the rest of Godfrey’s apology.
Phil knew what he was going to say. That he was unable to invite Atkins to dine with them. Ridiculous of course, he could probably seat fifty at table. A slap? Yes. Also a backhanded compliment that he recognized Atkins as someone worthy of being apologized to.
“You’ve been called back to town.”
“Godfrey—” Phil began.
He stopped her with a flick of his hand.
There was a standoff that seemed to go on forever, and Phil couldn’t think of a thing that would help the situation.
“You may search the maid’s room,” Godfrey said. “I’ll have someone show you to the servants’ wing, and then they will show you out. Nothing personal, Detective Sergeant.”
“Good to know.” Still Atkins deliberated. Then he reached into his pocket.
“I’ll be staying nearby with friends.” Atkins handed Phil a card. “The telephone exchange is written there.” He glanced at Godfrey. “In case you need me.
“Mr. Bennington.” Atkins strode toward the servants’ stairs without a backward look. The footman barely got there before him. Phil knew he was fuming, and she didn’t blame him.
“Really, Godfrey.”
“I hated to do it, Philomena. He’s a good man. You can tell, you know.”
“Then why?”
“He can be trusted, but some of his superiors can’t be. And being an honest man…” He shook his head. “He’s between a rock and a hard place. I couldn’t take the chance.”
“What is going on here, Godfrey?”
“On my own honor, I don’t know. And I would feel much better with Atkins on the case, but I have my superiors, too.” He clicked his fingers and a footman came to relieve them of their coats.
“A half hour then?” He walked off to the back of the house.
* * *
Lily was waiting in her room when Phil walked in. She jumped up from the dressing table bench. “What’s happening out there? Is Elva really dead? Madam?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so.” Phil was suddenly tired. Her body ached, her head ached, her heart ached. For Elva, for John Atkins, for Lily, whose past she didn’t even know.
“They say downstairs that someone tried to kill Mrs. P-r-r-att. But I don’t think so. Elva was afraid for herself.” Lily’s mouth worked. Phil didn’t know whether to comfort or pretend she didn’t see. But Lily turned away, answering the question for her.
“Did she tell you what she was afraid of?”
“No. She didn’t say. But I could tell.”
Because she too knew fear?
“What will you wear into dinner, madam? The others have gone ahead.”
“It hardly matters,” Phil said, sinking onto the dressing table bench. “My peach silk taffeta, I suppose. As soon as dinner is over, I’ll complain of a headache. You and Preswick will meet me here.”
“Are we going to catch the killer-r-r?”
“We’re going to try. The detective sergeant is searching Elva’s room.”
“Why?”
“I suppose, in case she was trying to poison Mrs. Pratt.”
“Not Elva. She is dead and not her mistress. And she ador-r-red Mrs. Pratt—madam.”
“Fetch me a gown, then hurry back to the servants’ quarters and see if the detective sergeant finds anything.”
Lily had gone to the door of the dressing room, but she stopped. “You don’t think they were after Mrs. Pratt, do you, madam?”
“I don’t know, but whoever did this was willing to kill many people in order to reach his goal. Murder is bad enough, but that is diabolical. I’m going to suggest you serve Mrs. Pratt until we get back to the city. I don’t think he will try again so soon.” Phil stopped. “But not if you’re afraid.”
“Me? I hope he tr-ries. I will slit his thr-roat.”
Phil gritted her teeth as a chill ran up her spine. “I don’t think that will be necessary, and please, Lily. Do not put yourself in harm’s way.”
“I am not afraid.”
“But I am. I don’t know what I would do without you.”
Lily blinked.
“Now get me into this gown. I don’t want to be late for dinner. And you don’t want to miss anything belowstairs.”
24
Dinner was a quiet affair. Luther and Gwen did not come down. Agnes sat, not eating and threatening to dissolve into a flood of tears. Ruth sat between Morris and Newty. Harry spent a few minutes attempting to engage Effie and Maud in conversation and finally gave up. Vincent barely lo
oked up from his plate. Daisy kept Godfrey entertained, for which Phil was thankful.
Phil had plenty to think about and even more to do. She needed to consult with Preswick and Lily, find out if they had learned anything more about Elva and whether Atkins’s search of her room had been successful.
Finding the missing letter opener had suddenly taken on more urgency. Something had tied the two murders together. Unless Gwen was the actual target and Elva had been a necessary sacrifice. Why Perry and Gwen? The only thing Phil could see they had in common was Agnes.
She looked across the table at the girl, whose eyes hadn’t left her dinner plate. She hadn’t liked Perry’s advances. Had she complained to Gwen? Had Gwen taken matters into her own hands?
Gwen might have managed to kill Perry and had Elva help her dump his body in the laundry chute. Elva had been with Gwen for many years and, according to Gwen, was very loyal. And according to Lily, very scared. Maybe she’d begun to feel the weight of guilt, had threatened to confess.
Phil’s mind balked at the possibility. Which was no excuse for not looking at the facts. Elva toward the end of the party would be upstairs readying her mistress’s things for bed. It would be easy enough for them to … What? And why in the middle of a party with hundreds of guests?
Unless Perry had actually gone further than Agnes had admitted. Lured her upstairs to her or his room. Gwen had caught them and was furious. Stabbed him with what? The letter opener? She kept it in her upstairs sitting room. The topaz was found on the second floor. There was a good chance that was where Perry was killed, or at least put into the—
“Don’t you agree, Lady Dunbridge?”
Phil started. “I beg your pardon?”
Godfrey gave her a tight smile; the meal was evidently wearing on him in spite of his delightful dinner mate. “I was agreeing with your idea that Lady Warwick should do a speaking tour in the States. Perhaps in the spring.”
Phil smiled back, thinking how fake they all were acting. “Absolutely. I think people would be interested in her life and her ideas.” But mainly in her scandalous behavior, she added to herself.
“Then it’s settled.”
“Oh Godfrey…”
Phil went back to her ruminations. She hadn’t gotten much further when dessert was brought in, a light Charlotte russe that was delicious but which everyone ate as if rounding the homestretch at Belmont.
As soon as Godfrey put down his spoon, Daisy stood. “Shall we?” she said, cuing the ladies to withdraw. Ruth gave Daisy a brief scathing look before dutifully standing. Did she actually think she would replace Gwen as hostess?
The ladies withdrew to the parlor. Phil caught up with Daisy. “I have a headache.”
Daisy frowned. “Must be the weather.”
“No doubt. Please don’t sound the alarm if I’m not in my room when you retire.”
Daisy’s eyebrows rose is supposition.
“I’ll tell you all about it later, but try to keep everyone here and things going as long as possible.”
“Everyone?”
“Everyone.” In a louder voice Phil said, “I must apologize. I have the beginnings of a headache.”
“I think I shall retire, also,” said Ruth.
Daisy sprang into action. “Oh, Mrs. Jeffrey. Ruth. You can’t leave me to fend for myself among all these young people. I depend on you to help me make the best of things.” She took Ruth’s arm and led her farther into the room, while Phil made her escape.
There were no boisterous voices coming from the dining room. Phil had a feeling the men would not linger overlong over their port.
Making certain no footman was in sight, she lifted her skirts and ran up the stairs to her suite of rooms.
Lily and Preswick were there.
“That detective didn’t find anything,” Lily said.
Preswick looked down his quite intimidating nose at her.
She made a face and added, “Sorry, my lady.”
“Of course. We are all a little overexcited tonight.” Phil glanced at her imperturbable butler and thought, Most of us.
“So there was nothing in Elva’s room that could be any kind of a clue. Did you speak with Detective Sergeant Atkins before he left?”
“No, but I waited for him in the servants’ hall downstairs. I knew he’d come down that way. I just knew he would. Mr. Tillis was with him. But as he passed he shook his head just a little at me. Like this.” Lily made a deadpan expression and moved her head slowly and minutely to the left. “But he was looking right at me. It was a message.”
A message indeed. But did it mean he hadn’t found anything or he couldn’t talk in front of anyone? And now he was miles away at some friends’ house.
“Nonetheless we shall search again. Let us go.”
They used the back stairs to the third-floor wing where the servants were housed. They met no one; still, Lily ran ahead to make sure they could enter unnoticed.
Phil and Preswick scurried down the hall to Elva’s room and Lily shut the door behind them.
It was a spacious room with a worktable, a wardrobe, and an upholstered sitting chair. The bed was narrow but looked comfortable enough. There was very little indication that anyone had searched through it, evidence of Atkins’s neatness as well as thoroughness. And he hadn’t found anything.
They searched again, starting with the most obvious—drawers, worktable, mattress, clothes cupboard. They pulled back the oval rag rug; sounded the floorboards; looked behind pictures and emptied the sewing basket.
“Nothing,” Lily said.
Phil sighed and sat down on the bed. “I was sure she must know something that made her the target of the murderer. And if she was frightened, and didn’t tell anyone, what was she afraid of?
“Tell us again what she said to you, Lily.”
“She said there were bad things happening. That she couldn’t stop it. And she didn’t understand it. And she was afraid.”
“She told you all this?”
“Since we came here, to Foggy Acres. I think at first she told me because she didn’t think I could understand. Sometimes it just helps to say things out loud.”
“Yes, very important,” Phil said, hoping Lily knew she could tell her anything without fear of retribution.
“When she started to wind down, I had to pretend to understand and speak a little English.”
“Clever,” Phil said. “Did she say what she was afraid of? Of getting caught? Of something she saw?”
“I tried to tell her that you would keep her safe but it took too many English words. And I didn’t want to give myself away.”
“You did right.” It had been stupid for Phil to have asked her to speak in Italian. A piece of self-assuredness and arrogance that had surely come back to bite them.
“And there was only one thing that could keep her safe.”
“Safe from what? Murder? Because she was afraid of another one happening? You think she saw the murderer?”
“Perhaps, but she didn’t say. Maybe she saw what happened and was afraid to tell.”
“But why not tell? She had friends here. Employers who cared about her well-being.”
“Because, my lady, if I might venture a theory.”
“Please do, Preswick.”
“Because she was afraid of someone in the household?”
“Possibly,” Phil agreed.
“Or because she was afraid someone she cared about was the murderer,” Lily added.
“A lover perhaps,” Phil said. “Lily, did she mention anyone that she might be smitten with? Someone she might want to protect?”
Lily gave her a look that defied description. “She is a lady’s maid. She makes money, lives in comfortable surroundings, and her work is not too hard; she has an amiable mistress. She wouldn’t be so stupid.”
Phil raised an eyebrow.
“Well, I wouldn’t be.” She hesitated. “I was thinking of her mistress.”
“Mrs. Pratt?”
&
nbsp; “Elva was very loyal. She would protect her with her life.” Lily frowned. “Which maybe she did in the end.”
The three of them grew silent on that thought.
Lily was the first to recover. “But I did see her talking to that secretary once. They were very appassionato.”
“Romantic?”
“I don’t think so. They were standing close, but I think it was so they wouldn’t be heard. And that Morris is always slinking about. He’s not very particular, that one.”
“But why would Morris want to kill Perry? And then his own mother?” It defied the imagination.
“So what was it? What did she have that could protect her? She must have left a note or something.” Phil stood, looked around the room, even to the ceiling. “Or the murder weapon.” Phil took a couple of steps away, turned back to Lily and Preswick. “What if she found the murder weapon?”
“And hid it somewhere,” Lily posed. “To keep it safe.”
“The police searched the servants’ quarters at the Pratts’ house. So maybe she took extra precautions. Where would she put it?”
She turned to Lily, who glanced down at her own ankle.
Phil frowned back at her. “On her person?”
“She didn’t say.”
If the murder weapon was actually the missing letter opener, it was, according to Gwen, heavy and clumsy to use. Bending and working all day, it would be a difficult item to carry around.
And if she had, Atkins would have found it when he searched the body, as he surely must have done, and somehow have found a way to tell her so.
“Besides her own person, where would be the next safest place? Somewhere no one else could get to it. But there is no such place.”
“What about among the medicines for Mrs. Pratt,” Preswick suggested.
“That’s good but Atkins already confiscated that and if he’d found anything surely he wouldn’t have left us here to fend for ourselves. Where else? What else would a maid have access to—of course, her mistress’s dressing room.”
“You never go into your dressing room when I’m not there?” Lily asked.
“No. Why would I?”
Lily shrugged, darted a look at Preswick. “Sorry, Mr. Preswick.”
Tell Me No Lies Page 28
