by Issy Brookw
“I have met Davies,” she said. “The Scavenger.”
“Oh, have you now?” He looked sideways, running his eyes along the shelves. “Well, now. Did you interview him about the crime?”
“I did, and others besides. Is there something I should know?”
“Well, I can tell you that he is a very, very likely suspect! Yes, he is. Now that you mention it, I can’t think of anyone more suspect. He is a horrible man, don’t you find?”
He was so close that she could smell him. He was warm, and fresh, but with a bitterness underneath that was probably the continual use of lotions and preparations.
Well — continual was a stretch. Had he ever any customers in the shop?
“He does not like me, that is certain,” Cordelia agreed.
“He likes no one, I think. Nasty, grasping, slimy little man.”
Cordelia could not disagree.
Suddenly the shop door opened and it wasn’t George returning from his errand. An older man stood in the entrance, but stopped dead when he saw Cordelia, and began to mutter something which was probably an apology.
“Oh!” Cordelia said. “I am sorry; don’t let me intrude on your time any longer. Thank you, Mr Lloyd. Stanley, let us go.” She felt as if she had been caught somewhere she ought not to have been, which in a way, she was. A woman in a man’s barbershop? Thank goodness she was but an unknown holidaymaker here. She hurried out with Stanley.
He was nearly puce with rage against Caradog. “My lady,” he burst out as they walked rapidly away from the shop and back towards the busier main street. “He stood too close to you. He was uncouth. My lady, let me tell Geoffrey…”
“Absolutely not! Not yet, anyway.”
“Is he a suspect?”
“He is,” she said. “Although he has made me think more of Davies, too. He claims to have an alibi. Many of them, in fact. This is something I need to check. Do you know where the Ship Inn is?”
Chapter Nineteen
Stanley was a fine companion but he was right to mention Geoffrey. Cordelia knew she needed someone a little more streetwise for her next excursion.
She decided that she was going to visit the public house that Davies had claimed to be drinking in, throughout the whole day of the murder.
There were problems, she reflected, as she made her way back to the inn with Stanley. First of all, if it were proved beyond doubt that he had an alibi, how useful was it, really? Could the sugar of lead not have been planted at any time? Could he had swapped the real sugar for the poison a week before the incident?
Constable Evans had recorded the results of his initial search and she had discussed them with him. There was no trace at all of the poison in the kitchen, and the small loaf of sugar that was stored in a jar there was pure sugar, according to the coroner. The only poison was found in the small china sugar bowl. The ladies had preferred to grind their sugar rather than chisel off lumps of it, and the bowl was full of what had appeared to be ground sugar.
So the poisoner had put the sugar of lead into the bowl, replacing the ground sugar with the poison. How long did one keep a sugar bowl on the table? How long did one keep sugar in a sugar bowl? Not long. You would not over-fill it. Sugar was expensive and precious. Even if you were trying to impress people, you would not put too much out at once in the bowl. So, Cordelia could assume that the poison had not been in the bowl for very long.
Assumptions were, however, dangerous.
I need to speak to Miss Scott, she thought. She pulled out her notebook as she walked and made a note to ask these questions.
When she got back to the inn and told her staff about her plans, there was an initial general outcry.
It was unacceptable, she was told, in various ways. Stanley let her know by going very quiet and looking unhappy. Ruby let her know by huffing, tutting and saying, “You will be shamed all over again.” Even Mrs Jones looked somewhat askance at the notion. “But it is a public house, my love,” she said. “You do know what that is, don’t you?”
“A place where people go to drink. I am hardly talking of a gin palace.”
“Men, and lower sorts of women will be there,” the landlady said. “It is not like my establishment here, you know.”
“I know. But I must go. I am a working woman myself, now. I am not going as Cordelia, Lady Cornbrook. No, I am going there as a detective, and that overrides my mere sex.”
Geoffrey leaned against a wall, his arms folded, but he was almost grinning. He pulled off his hat and ran his hand through his thick, greasy hair. “Well, my lady, if you are set on it, then I shall accompany you, but you cannot go as you are.”
She shot him a grateful smile. “I am completely aware of that. Ruby, come with me, please. I shall need your help to change my clothing to something more fitting with the task in hand.”
“You haven’t brought that cloak, have you?” Ruby said, referring to Cordelia’s specially-made “sleuthing cloak”.
“I know that you saw that I had added it to the luggage, and I know also that you removed it when you thought I was not looking. But it doesn’t matter. It is too warm for such things. However…”
Cordelia continued her litany of instructions as she towed Ruby back up the stairs to their rooms.
***
Being a stranger in an unfamiliar place was a kind of liberation. She had not felt this free before, not even when she had been staying with Hugo Hawke nor with her aunt Maud in Yorkshire. In both those cases, she had been with people who knew her. And when she was in London, too many people there also knew her or knew of her. She had thought she had some licence to be freer in London, because of the great city’s mix of people, but now she realised she had been as caged as ever.
Maybe it was because Wales was a different country. Regardless of the minutiae of interpretation of what a “country” was, now she had been here for a little while, she was adamant that it was a wholly separate sort of place to England. And being in a different country was exciting.
And freeing. No one knew her. She could be anyone she wanted to be. She didn’t have to reveal she had been married to a man with a title. She didn’t have to admit she had a large estate and a private income. She didn’t even have to give her real name.
She had tried to pretend to be someone else in London, but that had ended badly. Still, she thought she could do better this time, and it was part of being a good detective, after all. The old thief-takers of Bow Street were her inspiration now. They would go around the city pursuing criminals, on behalf of anyone who could pay.
Geoffrey nodded approvingly at her outfit. She was in a simple dark skirt, narrower than the current fashion, marking her as someone who did not have the funds to keep up with the mode. She wore a jacket that had all its buttons but some did not match, showing she was poor but careful to maintain some respectability, and a thin shawl that was knotted about her waist, the weather being too hot to wear it around her shoulders. Having the shawl handy showed she was expecting to be outside in any weather, and possibly for a long time. All these things said “respectable working woman”. She had a plain bonnet of Ruby’s on her head, and the only thing of her own were her stout shoes, which were plain and could pass.
Geoffrey knew where the Ship Inn was to be found and she told him her suspicions and her plans while they walked.
“No one looks my way as we go by,” she remarked to him.
“Does that bother you?”
“No, I like it. It shows that my disguise is working.”
“You cannot throw your weight and name around, however,” he warned her. “That will not match your appearance. And your manner of speech needs work.”
“I notice that you are not addressing me as ‘my lady’,” she said.
“Of course not. I am keen to maintain your disguise,” he said. There was a cheeky glint in his eyes. He was enjoying this.
But then, so was she.
“What should I call you, then?” Geoffrey asked as they r
eached the low dark blue door of the pub. It was propped open by a bucket with some dark and smelly liquid in it.
“Connie,” she said. “It’s close enough to my real name that you should get it right.”
“All right, Connie,” Geoffrey said. “Don’t act startled if I treat you like a real woman.”
“I am a real woman!”
“Aye,” he said, and grabbed her arm, and pulled her into the hot, loud, seething pit of people that was the low-class public house. “So let me buy you a drink, my lovely.”
There was nothing she could do. She baulked at acting in the same manner back to him, so she let herself be pulled along, passively. The low-ceiling room had few windows, and those that it did have were covered with fabric and brown paper. There were benches scattered around, and a few tables, and a blank and empty fireplace. The bar, such as it was, was no more than a longer trestle table. There was a man and two young women who seemed to be serving.
The customers were mostly men, and as it was the middle of the day, they were jobless and shifty-looking sorts. There was a faded and ancient old woman on a bench with her back against the wall, and she seemed to be asleep. The whole place smelled of stale sweat, tobacco and alcohol.
Geoffrey elbowed his way expertly to the makeshift bar, and grinned wolfishly at one of the women. She had a few missing teeth, and sparkling green eyes which made her beautiful anyway. He greeted her in his rough Welsh, and she laughed.
“English, is it?”
“Aye, yes, well, if you must,” he said. “But I get a discount for trying, right?”
“Wrong. What it is you are wanting?”
Cordelia knew she wasn’t going to get offered a sweet sherry. In the event, she didn’t get any kind of choice at all. Geoffrey simply ordered “two pints” and that was what they got.
“Looking for work, is it?” the green-eyed woman said as she put two stone tankards on the bar. Geoffrey passed a few coins across. Cordelia tried to see what he paid; she would have to reimburse him later, and she didn’t want him to inflate the cost if he thought she hadn’t seen.
“Not particularly,” Geoffrey said. “We’re just drifting through, heading south. I don’t think there’d be any work here for the likes of us.”
“Oh, do you mean because you’re English? Nonsense,” the friendly woman said. “Anyone’s welcome who can work, though you’ll have a harder time of it, maybe. Still, it will be easier if you go south to the Taffs. Plenty of work down there, you know.”
“That’s what we thought, eh, Connie?” Geoffrey nudged Cordelia and shoved the pint of foaming liquid towards her. “Get that down your neck.”
I will literally and actually kill him when we are out of this situation, Cordelia thought as she smiled through gritted teeth and closed her hands around the cool tankard.
Geoffrey ignored her look of daggers, and leaned forwards on the table, his elbows in pools of stale beer. “We did go down the docks earlier,” he said. “Thought we might be in with some luck, you know? But we came across some bloke with a very bad attitude, very bad. Name of Davies?”
“Davies y Sbwriel! Oh yes, he wouldn’t have had any time for you, I’m afraid. Nasty little man, he is.”
The man who was also behind the bar, such as it was, lifted his head at that. “Steady now, Bron. He’s not in at the moment, like, but you don’t want to be bad-mouthing our customers.”
“Well, now,” Bron said, putting her hands on her hips, just as sassy as Ruby ever was. “I would tell him to his face, I would!”
“And risk the wrath of the crachach down on our heads here?” the man said. “This is my pub and I wouldn’t have you upsetting them as gives us our licences and all.”
She flicked a towel in his direction. “Sorry, boss,” she said, laughing. She turned back to Cordelia and Geoffrey. “Ignore him. Grumpy old sod that he is, ha! No, Davies won’t give you any work, but go south and you will find some, I am sure.”
“Thank you,” Geoffrey said. “This is good beer,” he added.
Bron laughed with a gurgling, deep and infectious sound. “You are a charmer, aren’t you? It’s horrible.”
“Bron!” her boss said in dismay.
“I cannot lie,” she said. “I’d burst into flames when I stepped into chapel, would I not?”
“I am surprised you haven’t already,” her boss said.
“This Davies man,” Cordelia said, finding her voice at last. “So he’s a regular, is he?”
Bron put her palms on the table and straightened her arms, leaning forward to take some of the weight off her feet. “He is, unfortunately,” she said, and dropped her voice slightly out of respect to her boss and her position. “I don’t have a lot of time for him, but he is good custom.”
“Does he … is he …”
Bron cocked her head, and then understood. “Oh, no! He keeps his hands to himself, but if he did not, he would answer to all of us, I know that. Safest job I ever had, working here. No, he’s just rude and loud and nasty for the sake of it.”
“Is he prone to violence?” Cordelia asked.
Bron wobbled her head from side to side. “Eh … well, no, not really, not regular-like, but I wouldn’t want to push him too far, you know. There’s a devil in all of us, but all locked behind doors that need different keys.”
“Indeed,” said Cordelia. And a poet or a visionary in every Welsh man and woman, she thought. “Did he have anything to do with the ladies? You know, the one that’s dead and the one that’s ill. Miss Scott and Miss Walker.”
“Oh, now, are you asking if he could have poisoned them? They are saying it was an accident now, but I don’t think so. As to him doing it, though … oh, Hywel, what do you think?”
Her boss was dishing out some strong-smelling brown lamb stew from a large pot. “Y Sbwriel? He was here all that day. You remember, because we did have to call the constable. That young Evans came.”
“Oh!” Bron said, and put her hand to her mouth for a moment. “Of course, yes. He was here from the early morning, we let him in, and he was still half-drunk from the night before. I think he slept in a ditch to be honest. And he came in and was not feeling well, and so when Billy started on him, he had to have a go back, didn’t he?”
“He did, and Evans came out sometime that evening and a few of the lads helped take him down the lock-up.”
“That must have been after I went home,” Bron said. “Serves him right, though. He was spoiling for it all that day, now you mention it. Ah, love, what can I get you?” She was suddenly called away to serve someone else.
“Drink up, lass,” Geoffrey said, nudging Cordelia. His tankard was empty. She took a sip of the bitter liquid, and then passed it back to him.
“Go on,” she said. “You have earned it.”
As he noisily slurped at the foul drink, she rested her chin in her hands and thought hard. She didn’t think that anyone was lying to her, here. And they were unlikely to have mixed up the dates because it was a memorable day, with the rain and the floods and the murder.
Davies had only ever been a tentative suspect anyway. And if this were true, he was probably off the list.
But then, she remembered, she needed to check the situation of the sugar with Miss Scott. Was the poison planted that day — or in advance?
If it were done in advance, then she despaired of ever being able to uncover the real culprit.
Chapter Twenty
“Watch out for that horse, hey, Connie!” Geoffrey said jovially.
“I beg your pardon,” Cordelia snapped, but she stepped up on the path at the side of the road. They were on their way back to the inn. “We are back to normal now, thank you.”
“Right you are … my lady,” he said, managing to sound just as insouciant as when he was calling her Connie.
“And how much did you pay for the beer?” she asked.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “You have already paid me back.” He fished a hand around inside his jacket.
“How so?” she asked, feeling a warm glow. He does appreciate all that I do for him, she thought. He just doesn’t show it.
“Well, because while we were in that place, some cur stole your purse, and I got it back off him, and took recompense while I was at it. Here,” he said, and handed Cordelia back her small tasselled purse. She had not brought her bag with her, and her purse had been hung from a loop around her belt.
She stifled one of the bad words she’d heard in the pub, and managed to say, stiffly, “Thank you.” She felt somewhat foolish.
***
As soon as she got back to the inn, she wrote a note to Edith Scott. She folded it and addressed the paper in her neat copperplate, and gave it to Stanley to take to the sanatorium. She instructed him that if she had left, he was to ascertain where, and try to send the letter on after her. He was not to wait for a reply; she needed him back here.
Stanley left, and then she called Ruby to help her change into a day outfit more becoming to her station.
She was almost ready, when a tap came at the door to their rooms. Ruby left Cordelia sitting at the table, her hair half-done, and went to see who it was.
It was Mrs Jones. “There is a messenger downstairs, my lady,” she said. “Frank the Bludgeon asks that you might attend him at the house of correction.”
“Does he? Let the messenger know that we shall be there directly.”
***
It was early evening now. Cordelia’s stomach rumbled. Ruby had snatched some food from the kitchens and she surreptitiously shared some bread and a slice of game pie with her mistress as they passed down the corridor. To eat on the move, not at a table, was delightfully thrilling.
They chatted in fits and bursts about what the constable could want as they made their way through the still-busy streets. Indeed, people were emerging from their houses and places of work to enjoy the last of the heat of the day, and there was a general languid air of summer stuffiness hanging everywhere. People moved slowly, and talked loudly, and children ran between them all, seemingly unaffected by the weather in the way that the adults were.
