his head. “Not really. No, I tell a lie: when I picked them
up, they was talking to another couple, standing all together in a group like.”
“Would you recognize this couple if you saw them
again?” he asked.
“No.” He smiled apologetically. “I weren’t paying that
much attention. Look, I’ve got to be off now.”
“Wait,” Smythe said as Fletcher headed for the open entrance. “I’ve not paid for the information.”
The cabbie shook his head and grinned. “Keep yer coin,
mate. What little I know wasn’t worth much now, was it.”
“That’s all a matter of opinion.” Smythe realized he’d offended the man’s pride and was suddenly, deeply ashamed.
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Emily Brightwell
He’d handled this badly from the beginning, and he was determined to make up for it. Reaching into his coat pocket, he grabbed some coins and handed them to Fletcher.
“You’ve saved me a lot of work.”
The cabbie looked at the coins. “By crickety, this is
three florins!”
“Take it. You earned it. Like I said, you’ve saved me a
lot of trouble.”
“Thanks, mate, this is right good of ya.” Fletcher
walked to the entrance, then stopped and turned. “I did see
that other couple get into the hansom just ahead of mine. I
don’t know if that’ll do ya any good.”
Mrs. Jeffries was the last one to arrive for their afternoon
meeting. “I’m so sorry to be late,” she said as she hurried
toward the coat tree, “but the traffic was dreadful today. The
omnibus was held up for ages because of a crash between a
hansom cab and a water cart.”
“Not to worry, Mrs. Jeffries.” Mrs. Goodge poured the
housekeeper a cup of tea. “We’ve only just sat down ourselves.”
“Excellent.” She slipped into her chair, took a deep
breath, and then looked around the table at the others. “I’d
like to go first, if I may.” She waited for a moment and then
plunged ahead. “I’ve asked Ruth Cannonberry to give us
some assistance on this case. Perhaps I ought to have spoken to all of you before I took such an action, but I honestly believe she could be a great deal of help to us.”
“Does she know that our inspector doesn’t have this
case?” Betsy asked.
“I told her everything,” she explained. “It didn’t seem
fair not to tell her the whole story.”
“And she’s not alarmed by the prospect of workin’
behind the inspector’s back, so to speak?” Mrs. Goodge
asked.
“Not in the least.” Mrs. Jeffries relaxed a bit. “I know
it was a bit of a risk, my asking her for help, but frankly,
Mrs. Jeffries Appeals the Verdict
49
I really didn’t see that we’d any other choice. She has some
very powerful connections and we might very well need
them.”
“If we’re lucky, maybe her connections will keep us
from ’aving to put this on the inspector’s plate,” Smythe
mused. “That’d be right useful.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Mrs. Jeffries replied. “I had another run of good luck by bringing her into it. She actually knew the victim. Caroline Muran occasionally came to her
women’s suffrage meetings. They weren’t close friends
nor did they move in the same social circles, but she was
acquainted with her.”
“Did she like her?” Betsy asked softly. Somehow, one
of their own knowing the victim made it more real, more
personal.
Mrs. Jeffries smiled sadly. “Ruth says she was a very
nice woman—very kind and very intelligent. She was a
strong financial supporter of the society and gave them a
good contribution every year.”
“I expect they’ll miss that,” Mrs. Goodge muttered. She
wasn’t sure how she felt about some of Ruth’s radical
ideas. She used to be dead set against all of them. She’d always believed that the British class system was right and proper and that the lower classes should know their places.
But over the past few years, she’d changed her thinking on
such matters.
“Did Lady Cannonberry know of anyone who had a reason to dislike Mrs. Muran?” Betsy asked. “Was there anyone in the society she’d had a quarrel with or anything like that?”
“No, she was a member, but she wasn’t actively involved enough in the group to have made any enemies.”
“I suppose that would have been too simple,” Betsy
replied glumly. “Finding out who hated Caroline Muran
enough to murder her isn’t going to be easy.”
“Why wasn’t she involved?” Mrs. Goodge reached for
her tea cup. “She ought to have been if she believed in their
cause. She had money and she had time—”
50
Emily Brightwell
“But that’s just it,” Mrs. Jeffries interrupted. “She didn’t
have time. She was actively involved in running the metal
works factory.”
“You mean she was the manager?” Wiggins looked quite
horrified by the idea.
“Why shouldn’t she be the manager?” Mrs. Goodge said
tartly. “She owned the place, she ought to have been able to
run it as she saw fit. Women can manage factories as well
as men.”
“I didn’t say they couldn’t,” Wiggins insisted. “But it
couldn’t have been a very nice place, with all them nasty
chemicals about. I’ll bet the place stank to high heaven.”
“She had a manager,” Mrs. Jeffries interjected quickly.
“But she had to sack him.” That had been the pertinent
point she’d wanted to make. “She sacked him about a week
before she was killed. So we know that she had at least one
person in her life that couldn’t have been too pleased with
her.”
“Why’d she fire ’im?” Smythe asked eagerly.
“Ruth didn’t know any details.” Mrs. Jeffries picked up
her mug. “She heard the information secondhand after she
found out about the murder. But she thought nothing of it,
of course. Like everyone else, because Tommy was arrested
so quickly, she assumed Mrs. Muran’s death was simply a
robbery gone wrong.”
“That’s what everyone seems to think,” Smythe muttered. “We need to find out the name of her factory manager, the one she sacked. I can have a go at that tomorrow.”
Mrs. Jeffries nodded in agreement. “We definitely should
find out the man’s name. But that’s not all I have to tell you.
After I saw Ruth, I went to St. Thomas’s Hospital to have a
quick word with Dr. Bosworth.”
Dr. Bosworth was another friend who’d helped them on
several of their earlier cases. He had some very interesting
ideas about dead bodies, and his theories had often helped
them when they were on the hunt.
He’d spent several years in San Francisco and had seen
Mrs. Jeffries Appeals the Verdict
51
a rather large number of homicide victims, virtually all of
whom had been shot. Apparently, there was no shortage of
either guns or bodies in California.
Dr. Bosworth had come to the conclusion that you could
tell a great deal about how a person was m
urdered simply by
a careful examination of the death wounds. He also believed
that a thorough study of the murder victim could reveal
more than the mechanics of the cause of death; he believed
it could often give clues as to who had been the killer. Like
the household, Dr. Bosworth was quite discreet about his
help with Inspector Witherspoon’s cases.
“Did he do the postmortem?” Mrs. Goodge asked. “That
would make it nice and handy for us.”
“Unfortunately, he didn’t. But he promised he’d take a
look at the attending doctor’s report and get back to us. I
don’t know that it’ll help much,” she warned.
“It might,” Wiggins mused. “Dr. Bosworth knows a lot
about gunshot holes in a body. He might see something
that’d be good for us to know. He might be able to guess
what kind of gun it was. That’d narrow it down just a bit.”
Mrs. Jeffries stared at him for a moment. “Why, Wiggins, you’re absolutely right. We need to have some idea of what kind of weapon was used.”
“I’ll see if I can find out what kind of guns our suspects
own,” he offered eagerly.
“But we don’t even know who our suspects are,” the cook
pointed out.
“That doesn’t matter,” Wiggins explained. “I’ll just try to
find out if anyone in Mrs. Muran’s circle owned a weapon.
That ought to be useful.” He looked at Smythe. “And you
ought to find out if the fellow that was sacked has a gun.”
“I’d already thought of that,” Smythe replied. “It might
take a day or two, though.”
“That would be most helpful.” Mrs. Jeffries looked
around the table. “Who would like to go next?”
“Let me,” Betsy entreated. “It’ll not take long. I walked
my feet off but I didn’t hear all that much. Mainly, it was
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Emily Brightwell
just a repeat of what you’ve already told us. Mrs. Muran
was very nice and well liked by her servants. Her factory
workers are going to miss her, as she was getting ready to
have their housing redone properly. The local merchants
are going to miss her as well. She apparently settled her accounts promptly at the end of each month.” She shrugged.
“It’s not much, I know, but I’ll be out again tomorrow to
see what I can find out.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself; you’ve learned a lot.”
Smythe patted her shoulder. “Not as much as me, but
enough so that you can hold your head up.”
She laughed and cuffed him playfully on the arm. “You
just wait. I’ll find out lots more than you do tomorrow.”
“I hope I find out who owns a gun tomorrow,” Wiggins
muttered. “I didn’t find out anything at all today.”
“No one would talk to you?” Smythe asked, his voice
sympathetic.
“The only person I met was a housemaid, but she wasn’t
much of a talker. I hung about the area for ages, but I didn’t
see anyone else that seemed likely to speak to me. It was
all posh ladies goin’ to tea and gentlemen comin’ home
from work. All in all it wasn’t a good day.” He wondered if
he ought to tell the others about how scared the poor girl
had been. No, they might think he’d been silly and incompetent; best to leave it alone and make his own amends.
The girl was probably fresh in from the country and he
needed to be careful in how he approached her. If she saw
him skulking about it would likely frighten her more.
“Not to worry, Wiggins, you’ll do better tomorrow. We
both will,” Betsy said cheerfully.
“Of course you will,” Mrs. Goodge said quickly. She
was bursting to tell them her news. “Now, I’d like to have a
go if no one minds.”
“You must of found out somethin’ excitin’.” Wiggins
grinned. “I can always tell; your cheeks go all pink.”
Mrs. Goodge laughed. “Really? I’d no idea. You’re right,
though, I did find out something exciting and it was almost
Mrs. Jeffries Appeals the Verdict
53
by accident, but that’s neither here nor there. It seems the
housekeeper for Mr. and Mrs. Muran has melancholia and
has taken to her bed. She’s had it ever since she heard about
Mrs. Muran’s murder.”
“Melancholia?” Wiggins frowned. “Is that the sad
sickness?”
“It’s generally more of a mental or nervous condition,”
Mrs. Jeffries replied. “At least that’s what I’ve always
heard. Sorry, Mrs. Goodge, I didn’t mean to interrupt. Do
go on.”
The cook told them about her visit from young Tom
Briggs. She left out the part where she had to chase him
clear across the communal garden with promises of seed
cake and sticky buns in order to get him to come back.
“According to what Tom overheard his mother tellin’ his
father, his aunt Helen hasn’t set foot back in the Muran
household since she heard about the murder.”
“Where does she live?” Smythe asked.
“Number Eighteen Cedar Road, near the Waltham
Green railway station.”
“She wasn’t a live-in housekeeper?” Mrs. Jeffries
queried.
“No, she used to come in before breakfast and then
leave as soon as the dinner was served.”
“That’s an odd way to run a ’ousehold, isn’t it?” Wiggins
asked curiously.
“It’s actually becoming more and more common,” Mrs.
Jeffries replied. “I wonder if the other staff lived out as well.”
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Goodge frowned. “That isn’t the
sort of detail I’d expect Tom to know.”
“We can find out easily enough,” Betsy said. She
reached for the teapot and poured herself a second cup.
“I’ll go along tomorrow and see what’s what,” Wiggins
offered. “I was plannin’ on goin’ back anyway, you know to
suss out who’s got a gun or not. Or would you rather I go
along to where the housekeeper lives and see what I can
find out there?”
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Emily Brightwell
Mrs. Jeffries thought for a moment. “Go back to the
Muran neighborhood. We’ve learned a bit about the victim,
but I think we need to learn something about the rest of the
household as well.”
“I can go along to Cedar Road,” Betsy offered. “The
shopkeepers can wait for another day.”
“Good.” the housekeeper looked at Smythe. “How did
you do today?”
“Not as well as Mrs. Goodge, but a bit better than Wiggins,” he grinned. “I found the cabbie that dropped the Murans off on the night of the murder. Accordin’ to ’im, when they first got in the hansom, Mr. Muran told the driver to
take them home. But then he suddenly sticks his head out
and tells the driver to take them across the river to Barrick
Street. Last he saw of them, they were walking down the
road.”
“Did he see anyone else in the area?” Mrs. Goodge
helped herself to another slice of bread.
“No, he said the place was deserted. It’s one of them are
as that’s full of little factories and warehouses. Once the workday ends, there’s no one about. The cabbie, who seems
to know the neighborhood, claims most of those businesses
don’t even have watchmen at night.” He told them the rest
of the information he’d gotten that day, taking care to tell
them every little detail, including the comments of the other
two cabbies about the night of the murder. Previous cases
had taught them that sometimes it was the unimportant detail that solved the case.
“Some businesses are so cheap,” Mrs. Goodge muttered
darkly. “You’d think they’d pay for a watchman or two. A
deserted street in the middle of the night isn’t exactly going to have many witnesses about.”
Smythe sat back in his chair. “I thought I’d go around
and have a good look at the road where they got let off. It’d
be ’elpful if we knew exactly where the murder happened,
you know, the exact spot.”
“Will you have enough time?” Mrs. Jeffries asked. “It
Mrs. Jeffries Appeals the Verdict
55
might take hours for you to find out the name of the sacked
manager and track him down.”
“And you’ll ’ave to find out if he’s got a gun,” Wiggins
added. “That’ll not be easy, either.”
Smythe realized he also had to go see Blimpey, but he
wasn’t going to share that information with the rest of
them. “We’ve got a bit of time,” he replied. “I’ll put goin’
to the murder scene at the bottom of the list and if I can’t
get to it tomorrow, I’ll go the day after.”
“That’s an excellent idea,” Mrs. Jeffries said. She put
her mug down. “If everyone agrees, I’d like to have a quick
word with Constable Barnes tomorrow. He might be able to
get us a copy of the original police report.”
“That would be very useful,” the cook said. “But we’d not
want to put the constable in any sort of awkward position.”
“He’s a clever man,” Betsy said. “He’d be very able to
help us out a little without putting his own position as a police officer in any sort of . . .” she couldn’t think what the proper word might be.
“We won’t let him compromise himself,” Mrs. Jeffries
said quickly. “I’ll be very discreet. As I’ve mentioned before, there are times when I think the good constable is very aware of what we’re doing.” Actually, she knew for a
fact that Constable Barnes knew exactly what they did, but
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