by Issy Brookw
“You have been out in a storm, and threatened by a maniac at the sanatorium!” she said. “Now you will come back and be treated properly. Your nerves will be in shreds. I have some special alcohol which will help.”
“Mrs Jones, there is no need…” Cordelia protested as she was dragged out of the police station.
“Nonsense, bach,” Mrs Jones said. “We women must stick together.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Cordelia submitted to Mrs Jones’s ministrations and actually, it was not all bad. Ruby received the same warm treatment. It was a relief to change their clothes again, eat some warm food, and settle back into their room.
But Cordelia could not settle for long.
“Miss Scott is in danger, and Gareth Mogg is our biggest suspect. We must act! I will go and see Constable Evans again.”
“He will have set a watch on Mogg and Lloyd,” Ruby said. “He’s not daft.”
“I need to be sure that he has. The intrusion last night shows that things are heating up.”
Cordelia was on her way through the saloon bar, intending to find Stanley to take her through the town, when she was met by the head constable who was coming to find her.
“Aha! Just the man I hoped to see. About Gareth Mogg…”
“Indeed, about the man himself,” Constable Evans said with a smile. “The fates do smile upon poor Miss Scott. First, though, I have been sent this to return to you.”
He handed her a packet. She recognised it immediately and took it with a sigh. “It is the money I left at the sanatorium for Miss Scott’s journey.”
“She sent a message via one of my petty constables who has returned from there. She thanks you and begs you think kindly of her.”
“I do, but she is in danger! She must leave. I will return and persuade her, somehow.”
“There is no need. She has gone, according to my man. She left this morning after the alarums of last night.”
“Well, thank goodness,” said Cordelia. “Do we know where she has gone, or how she has effected her escape?”
“She has some distant cousins, I am told, who have said that she might go to them. They are somewhere near Shrewsbury. It is England but it will do well enough. And as for the funds to do it, she has accepted a most unusual gift indeed.” Constable Evans beamed at her.
“You are teasing me. Tell me!”
He grinned. “I apologise. But listen, her escape, it is all the work of Gareth Mogg.”
“No. Who? Our Mr Mogg? Our suspect? But how, and why? And are they not enemies?”
“And were they not once friends?” Constable Evans said. “Remember what we learned from the neighbours at the house.”
“Indeed. He was a suitor, was he not? That love spoon with his initials on. Yes. And yet … have you spoken with him to confirm this?”
“No. I was on my way to his house and thought you should like to accompany me.”
“Indeed I will! For what if this is all a terrible plot to simply lure her away and murder her in the hills on the journey to Shrewsbury?”
Constable Evan’s light-hearted demeanour faded. “I had not thought of that. Quickly. With me.”
***
The last time she had gone to Gareth Mogg’s house, she had found it empty and been thwarted. This time, however, he was at home, having a late lunch. The housekeeper bid them wait in a small room just to the right of the narrow, dark hallway. Gareth Mogg came to them within a few minutes, wiping his hands on a small towel. He stepped into the room warily. His face looked very pale, almost grey.
“Is this about Miss Scott?” he said at once. He squinted briefly at them and then looked down.
That does not prove his guilt, Cordelia reminded herself, but she fixed him with her most steely glare. She let Constable Evans speak first.
“Sir, can you tell us your connection to the lady?” he said.
Mr Mogg fiddled with the edge of the towel and worked a thread loose. He worried at it to make it unravel. He didn’t look up at them. “I have sent her money so that she can go away to recover in peace. I heard, this morning, about an intruder at the sanatorium and I thought that they might have gone for her. I don’t believe that they ate mouldy prawns. I believe that someone wants them both dead. I could not bear for…” He choked and coughed. “It must stop, all this. So I sent her enough to leave this place.”
“And did she know who sent her the money?”
“She did.”
“Why on earth would she accept? You have spoken badly of them both, and we know that you have argued,” Cordelia said, snapping slightly.
“Yes, we had argued. But before that, we were all friends. And I know this makes me look guilty, but I can assure you, I am innocent of any wrongdoing.”
“You are not,” Cordelia said. Constable Evans grunted. She knew he didn’t want to stir up trouble with the council, and that he would not speak out about the adulteration of the wine. But she was not connected with the crachach and she could say whatever she liked. “You are not innocent. You are using a poison to sweeten your cheaper wines. I found it in your warehouse. It is sugar of lead.”
“It is not such an uncommon practise,” he protested, his voice cracking. “Why, what is in milk? That’s water and chalk, is it not? And what of bread? Find me a loaf of bread that does not contain such ‘improvers’ as alum or yet more chalk.”
“But it was sugar of lead that killed Miss Walker and has poisoned Miss Scott.”
“No.” Mr Mogg gripped the towel tightly now, and looked from Cordelia to Constable Evans and back again, seeking confirmation. There was a sheen of sweat on his forehead. Guilt? Illness? Something else?
The policeman nodded. “Yes. It is true.”
Mr Mogg began to shake his head. “No. No! It was not me. Why, why would I, why would I kill the woman I still loved?”
“Aha! Because she rejected you? Because Miss Walker had no idea you were going to propose and so when you threw that party, she had no choice but to call it all off, and in public too! You were jilted and ashamed.”
“No. Yes, all right,” he said, thickly. “I will admit that I was angry. And I was ashamed. I felt as if she had led me to understand things that did not, in fact, exist. We were close friends and as a man, friends with a woman, surely I was right to assume that our long conversations and shared interests would naturally lead to a marriage. I still stand by that. She wronged me. But … but … she did not deserve to die for that.”
“Were you not glad she had died?”
He snarled, and turned his head away, but the anguish on his face was for himself, not for them. “An evil part of me felt better but I prayed it away. I am a sinner and I do not claim to be otherwise, and there are such emotions in me that seem in conflict even with my own soul. In truth, I felt all things and no things at all, all at once. But you must believe this,” he said, now strangling the towel in his hands. “I would do anything for her to be alive again. And I would do anything to see her killer brought to justice. If I obstructed you in the past, I am sorry for it. I have had time to think.”
“Are you saying this so that we don’t suspect you?” Cordelia said. “Are you saying this so that we do not investigate the wine in your warehouse?”
This tipped him into anger. He shouted his reply. “I am not!” Such was his fury that Constable Evans put out one hand towards him, and the other arm in front of Cordelia as if to protect her.
“Go ahead!” Mogg spluttered. He held one hand to his forehead now, the effort of shouting obviously taking its toll. “Investigate my wine, close down my warehouse — do you think I care? I have lost the woman that I loved. She might not have loved me back, though I still believe that she did, in her own way. But I loved her. I was angry with her, sometimes I hated her, but you can love and hate at the same time. I would not harm her. And I will look after those who were close to her. Sending her the money, this is my act of atonement, my act of remembrance; I will make sure that Miss Scott is s
afe.”
There was a short silence. Cordelia studied his face carefully. In her gut, she felt that he was telling the truth. He looked ill, not guilty.
But her gut feeling was not enough for a court. In a low voice, trying to be non-threatening, she said, “Thank you, Mr Mogg, and I am sorry for the distress and for your loss. Please, in the interests of discovering the killer, I must ask you another question. Where were you last night?”
He bristled, standing up straight and throwing a look of hate and resentment her way. But then he closed his eyes, and exhaled, letting his shoulders sag forwards. In a tone of defeat, he said, “I was enjoying … well, I was attending … a meal with other members of the council, at the Gogerddan Arms.”
“All night?” she probed. “What time did you come home?”
“I slept in the inn,” he said, with some embarrassment. “The events of the past few weeks have weighed heavily upon me. I drank rather to excess, I am ashamed to admit. I am, as you can see, a man of passions. I would have disgraced myself except that I understand I drank so quickly that I passed almost immediately to sleep, and they covered me up where I fell. The coroner himself was there, and will vouch for me. I am sure the inn staff will do so, likewise. They could hardly have missed me, after all. In the morning, when I was woken up, I heard the news from the sanatorium.”
Cordelia looked sideways at Constable Evans, who was smiling slightly. “We shall check,” the constable said.
“Please do, and then get on with your job, which is finding the real killer.”
It was obvious now that he was not ill; he was simply terribly hungover. Cordelia was curious about one more thing. “The council, of whom you are a member, are of the mind that the death was a tragic accident. Do you speak openly against that idea?”
He hesitated. Then he said, “Yes, I do. And you will find that the council is not the homogenous cartel that is often believed of it. Yes, some men hold great power and sway. But we are all individuals, and things shift, things move. The coroner has made his views known, but I am not afraid to speak out. It is not the court leet anymore. The world is changing. We cannot do things the old way.”
Constable Evans let out a long sigh, as if relieved of something, and Cordelia thought that she understood. They thanked Mogg for his time. He begged to be kept informed of the progress of their enquiries.
As they stood outside the house, Constable Evans said, “If he is lying, then I am fooled.”
“I also,” said Cordelia. “What will you do now?”
“We need his story to be checked,” Constable Evans said. “I must go to the station, and I will find a petty constable to go to the inn and make the necessary enquiries.”
“I can send my coachman, Geoffrey. He will be as reliable as any of your part-time men, and he can be there more quickly, I think, than you taking a working man from his daytime post.”
“Thank you; it will ease my burden. I have some reports to write up.”
“I shall see to it directly,” Cordelia said, “and we shall meet again later today.”
They bid each other good day. Cordelia made her way alone through the streets to the inn. It was not far, and she felt safe in the small town. She also felt bold. She was a detective! She whispered it to herself from time to time.
She had a place, and she was happy.
And then a fear stole into her heart. If they did not uncover the truth here, was she still a detective? She was only as good as her last case.
A pressure squeezed her chest. So if Mogg was no longer a suspect … someone out there was. She walked quickly back to the inn, and sent Geoffrey away on his task.
She went looking for Ruby, but her maid had disappeared.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Mrs Jones had no idea where Ruby had gone, but Stanley’s glowering demeanour revealed the truth without him having to say a word: she had gone to meet with George Price.
Cordelia realised she was hungry. She had taken what could have been either a late breakfast or an early lunch when she’d returned to the inn that morning, but now it was mid-afternoon. Her schedule was all topsy-turvy. She took a quick snack of welsh cakes, made up hot by Mrs Jones, and then went back out to the police station. She left a message that Geoffrey, if he returned, was to come and meet her there.
The intrusion by the unknown man into the sanatorium, and the subsequent flight of Miss Scott was bringing matters to a head, and she could not lose the impetus now.
She found the house of correction in a high state of excitement and discussion. Both constables Evans were there, and three other petty constables. She recognised the stocky baker, and nodded to all of them. The three petty officers looked somewhat askance at her presence, but she was warmly welcomed by young and old Evans, and young Evans gave up his seat for her.
Geoffrey arrived from the inn soon afterwards, while they were still making introductions and organising cups of tea.
“The staff at the inn confirm that Gareth Mogg was there last night, and slept there in a state of high intoxication,” he announced. “They express complete disbelief that he would have been able to leave the place. They were surprised he managed to walk this morning, to be honest. The money he sent to Miss Scott was done by a boy on a pony; he did not go himself. And the inn was well locked over night; he certainly stayed there.”
Cordelia nodded. “Thank you. So, Mogg is out of the picture and Leopold Scott also. Davies, unpleasant though he is, cannot be a suspect either. His alibi holds.”
“We are left, then, with none other than Caradog Lloyd,” the head constable said. “But he is nowhere to be found.”
The petty constables all shook their heads. “We have all been searching as we wanted to set a watch on him, but there is no word of him.”
Cordelia sat bold upright, and said very loudly, “Then why are we all sitting here? He must be found!”
“I have more men out hunting for him right now,” Constable Evans said reassuringly. “These here have just finished their shift, that is all. Do not worry. He will be found within the hour, I am sure of it.”
“Good,” said Cordelia. “How many roads lead out of this town?”
“Three, but they soon branch out. We cannot pursue them all. We must think logically. If he wanted to flee this place, he could also leave by sea, depending on the tide. But I would wager that he will be found in the town.”
“Logically?” Cordelia said. “Well, then. The thing that ties Lloyd to the ladies is their past. They came from the same village, and recently, too.”
“What happened there between them?” asked young Evans.
Cordelia felt cold ice down her spine. She breathed in sharply. “I don’t know,” she said. “That is the final piece of the puzzle. What has ever happened between them? Like Mogg and Miss Walker, could there have been a love gone wrong?”
Every person in the room pulled some kind of face. Young Evans spoke up. “I don’t think that Mr Lloyd is the settling-down type, my lady. And I … well … I am sorry, but … um …”
“You feel you cannot speak of it in front of me,” she replied with a smile. “I know. That Lloyd is a flighty and arrogant man who sees women as disposable playthings. He even tried his charm on me. Luckily I am an old widow who has nothing but a heart of stone.”
There was a ripple of tittering and a few polite murmurings that she was not old, and so forth. She waved them away. “I doubt that he would have set his cap at either of the ladies. And he would have known he would be rejected if he tried.”
“He probably went through all the other women in the village, though,” older Evans said. “Begging your pardon, my lady!”
“Yes, yes.” Then Cordelia stopped and rubbed at her eyes. “All the other women in the village…”
Something nagged at her. The village, and the justice that was meted out to those who stepped out of line. It had been mentioned when she’d first come to the town.
The Ceffyl Pren.
“It is him!” she said, and jumped to her feet. “He must be found. Go south. He will go that way, to the places that he knows. I do not think he will stay in the town, not now.”
“And you?” Constable Evans said.
“I am going first to his shop,” she said. “I will find proof there, I am certain of it. The courts will need it. I will break down the door if I need to. And I will be safe as I do not think that he will be there. But you men, you must pursue him, and quickly.”
She whirled around and took two quick steps but collided with Ruby.
Her maid was in a state of distress, with tears in her eyes and her bonnet at a rakish angle. She clung onto Cordelia’s arms. “My lady!” she said.
“Ruby? Is someone dead?”
“No,” she said. “I have news for you.”
“Connected with the murder?”
“No.”
She assumed, then, that the love affair between George and Ruby was over. She said, “Has he hurt you in any way?”
“No, not at all, but—”
“But nothing. I am going there now anyway. I assume he will still be at the barber’s shop?”
“Who?”
“George. Come along. I shall kill two birds with one stone, and give that lad a piece of my mind for upsetting you so.”
“My lady, it is not him that has upset me.”
“You look upset to me. Come!”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Cordelia rushed out, her heels clipping on the pavement, and Ruby scampered alongside, trying to keep up, and set her bonnet right, and wipe away her tears, and explain, all at the same time. To the other side of Cordelia came young Constable Evans, and another petty officer who she did not recognise but who was called Geraint. She wasn’t sure if that was his surname, first name, or possibly both. Geoffrey followed behind, stuffing a pipe.
“George will be there!” Ruby gasped as Cordelia picked up the pace. She was almost running now, in spite of the looks of disapproval she was getting from the people that she barged past.
“Good,” said Cordelia.
