by Evelyn James
“Please, let me,” she stepped in and almost wrestled the handles of the wheelchair from Mrs Hunt. “We are still waiting for one of our party.”
“Very well,” Mrs Hunt looked mildly offended. “I shall save us some seats. Presumably you will need to be at the head of the table?”
Despite referring to Tommy, she never took her gaze off Clara.
“Well, yes…”
The woman bustled off before Clara could say anymore.
“That woman!” Tommy spat out the words in an utter temper. “The impudence of it all! Treated me as if I didn’t exist!”
“I know,” Clara groaned. “And now we look doomed to sit with her.”
“I think not!” Tommy declared stoutly. “There are two ends to a table, we shall just happen to go to the one opposite her!”
That plan might have worked except, by the time they had collected Annie and made their way to the table, someone had already acquired the seat at the bottom of the table, and it would look extremely odd to oust them when it was apparent a space had been set aside for Tommy at the top end. Defeated, the party joined Mrs Hunt. She was sitting like some mythical griffin on guard duty, stiffly glaring down her beak-like nose at the other dinner guests and resting her talon-like hands on the table.
“I saved the seats,” she informed Clara as they arrived. “There are three of you, yes?”
“Yes,” Clara admitted.
Tommy was wheeled into his place in the top spot, with Mrs Hunt directly on his right. She had saved two chairs opposite herself for Clara and Annie. None of the other guests near them had yet been introduced to Clara, so there seemed no sparing them from an evening talking with Mrs Hunt.
They had barely sat down when the first course arrived; a cream of mushroom soup.
“Look at the ghastly stuff,” Mrs Hunt lifted up a spoonful of soup and tipped it off back into the bowl with a plop.
Clara, who thought the soup rather tasty, merely smiled as she consumed hers.
“At least there are no rats,” Tommy said testily. He had been informed of the incident at the teashop. He was still cross with Mrs Hunt’s abrupt manner towards him, and couldn’t resist the jibe.
“There was no rat,” Mrs Hunt said, eating her soup despite her criticism of it. “The girl was stupid and clumsy.”
Clara said nothing. The strange behaviour of Eleanora still had her puzzled. What had she seen under the table? Had something been dropped?
“I shall still complain to Mr Hatton, naturally,” Mrs Hunt continued.
“Naturally,” Clara mumbled, trying to avoid conversation and knowing it was not going to work.
“Well? Are you going to introduce yourselves, or do you intend to sit there like lemons?” the sudden change in Mrs Hunt’s tone, the sharpness of her pronouncement, made them all look up.
For an instant they were all too stunned to say anything, then Clara regained her composure.
“Clara Fitzgerald. This is my brother Thomas Fitzgerald and our friend Annie Green.”
“Mildred Hunt,” the woman opposite them said. “I’ve heard of you, Miss Fitzgerald. I believe I saw your name in the papers.”
Clara uncomfortably waited for her to elaborate on that statement, Mrs Hunt was the sort of person who you were never sure about what they might say next.
“You are a detective,” Mrs Hunt informed her.
“Yes. I am,” Clara agreed. “Though, for the moment, I am on holiday.”
“I was not about to employ you,” Mrs Hunt snapped. “I was merely observing the matter. I must say, I do like to see a woman taking charge of her own life. And what do you do Miss Green?”
A look of sheer panic crossed Annie’s face. She was terrified of admitting to this woman that she was actually the Fitzgeralds’ maid.
“Annie is my assistant,” Clara interceded swiftly. “She helps with my cases.”
“Indeed? She is rather a quiet thing for a detective.”
“I find saying less is often the way of finding out more,” Annie found her tongue with some relief. Her panic gone she met Mrs Hunt’s eye. “And what do you do?”
“I used to teach,” Mrs Hunt declared. “Until I retired on a small inheritance that is.”
Mrs Hunt’s hand holding the spoon began to tremble. It was subtle, but her spoon splashed into the soup and suddenly she dropped it. Mrs Hunt masked the unexpected loss of control swiftly, raising her napkin to her mouth and mumbling about how she had had enough soup. She placed her hands in her lap, but not before Clara noticed that her right hand, the one that had dropped the spoon, was still trembling.
The main course that evening was duck with a redcurrant gravy and boiled potatoes. Annie was taking notes on everything served, as if she was studying for an exam on dinner party menus. She was intrigued by the redcurrant gravy, which was new to her. Her gravies were made from the juices of the roasting joints, mixed with a bit of cornflour and gravy salt. The blacker it came out, the better. But she had to admit that the redcurrant gravy, despite being pale and thin, was not altogether unpleasant. It distracted her, at least, from Mrs Hunt, whose attention was once more on Clara.
“Do you live with your parents?” she asked.
“They are deceased,” Clara replied, feeling annoyed by the bluntness of the query.
“So you live alone?”
“I live with my brother.”
Mrs Hunt’s eyes travelled to Tommy at last.
“And he is not married?”
“I am not,” Tommy answered the question, annoyed that Mrs Hunt refused to address herself to him.
“Difficult, I suppose, being a cripple.”
Mrs Hunt was close to getting an earful from Tommy, Clara was not far off herself. The woman was obnoxious and nosy, no worse combination was there.
“I take it you are married?” Clara interjected, deciding attack was the best form of defence.
“Once, many years ago. Do you…”
Before Mrs Hunt could unleash her next question Clara jumped in again.
“Are you widowed, then?”
Mrs Hunt actually had to pause.
“Not precisely,” she said at last.
“How can you be not precisely widowed?” Clara asked, being more pointed with her questions than normal because the woman had rattled her temper.
“I do not know where my husband is,” Mrs Hunt said at last, her voice less certain now. “He vanished thirty years ago.”
Tommy gave a huff under his breath. They all heard it.
“I occasionally deal with missing husbands,” Clara said, deflecting attention once more.
“I don’t particularly want him back,” Mrs Hunt toyed with her duck, her hand was still trembling though she had it mostly under control. “I have managed quite well these last three decades without him.”
Clara’s interrogation of Mrs Hunt had, for the moment at least, deflated the woman’s curiosity, and she turned her attention to her meal. For a happy fifteen minutes Clara, Tommy and Annie were left in peace to enjoy their duck. Then dessert arrived; a chocolate torte from an Italian recipe. Mrs Hunt looked aghast as she was handed hers.
“Chocolate cake? For dessert?”
Clara said nothing.
“I am appalled by this place,” Mrs Hunt told them all. “I have never known such an awful meal.”
She prodded at her torte.
“I cannot eat this!” Mrs Hunt stared down the table, looking for someone who would support her in this culinary outrage. Unfortunately, the other dinner guests were quite content with their dessert. “Do you consider this adequate service?”
Clara glanced up at the question. She had been attempting to ignore Mrs Hunt.
“I have found the meal most enjoyable,” she said, quite honestly, though with a frisson of pleasure at seeing Mrs Hunt so put out.
The woman puffed out her cheeks and clearly could not fathom why no one else was as outraged as her by their evening’s meal. Abruptly, and rather violen
tly, she drove her fork into her torte so that it stood upright.
“I am going to my room,” she told no one in particular, before rising sharply and leaving the table.
“Good riddance,” Tommy whispered as soon as she was out the doors of the dining room. “What an utterly appalling woman!”
Clara was watching the fork that Mrs Hunt had stabbed into her torte, it was still vibrating from the force of the movement.
“I rather hope we don’t have to eat with her again,” Annie added. “I don’t think I could face it.”
“Did anyone not think…” Clara stopped herself.
“What were you going to say?” Tommy asked her.
Clara shook her head.
“No, nothing,” she said, but she was still watching the fork tremble and thinking of Mrs Hunt’s hand.
Chapter Four
Clara discovered that the perils of charabanc travel included the misfortune of indigestion caused by eating too much and doing too little when she sat in her hotel room a little after dinner. She felt rather queasy – too much cake, too many meals in one day, just too much. She patted her bloated stomach and sighed. How was she ever to sleep? She was exhausted, but felt too ill to relax into slumber. She was really beginning to regret this holiday.
She had just decided to mix up a glass of bicarbonate of soda and water (the bicarb had been packed by Annie in the luggage as a precaution against foreign foods – ie. anything cooked outside of Brighton) when there was a quiet knock on the door. It was so quiet, in fact, that Clara was at first uncertain she had heard it at all. She paused halfway across the room. For a moment she waited, but there was no other sound and she was just moving to her suitcase again when the knock was repeated, this time rather more firmly.
“Who is there?” Clara asked.
“Excusa me, madam,” the heavily accented English of their Italian host was at once recognisable to Clara. “Might I, aska you to assist me?”
Clara was curious. She went to her room door and opened it. The hotel owner was stood just outside looking very worried.
“What has happened?” Clara asked.
“I do not know,” the Italian gave a very dramatic shrug. “But your girl Annie, she say you are a detective?”
“Yes?” Clara said cautiously, wondering what she was about to be embroiled in.
“Then, maybe, you coulda come and help? I don’t wanna have to call the polizia,” the unfortunate man wrung his hands together. Clearly something serious had occurred.
“You best let me see what has you so upset,” Clara said, deciding that at least this late night drama would keep her mind off her indigestion. Fortunately, she had yet to change out of her day clothes, having felt too unwell to be bothered about them when she flopped on her bed. “And you best explain this all to me, as well.”
The hotel owner motioned for her to follow him down the hallway.
“You saw, I hope, that all the rooms are a fitted with call buttons?” he asked as he walked.
“I had,” Clara said.
“They linka to my office downstairs. A few minutes ago the call button for room twenty-one rang. I come up. I knock on door twenty-one. No one answer,” again he shrugged dramatically, causing his neck to appear to disappear into his suit. “I go back down, the call button is still ringing. I getta out my master key and I go back to room twenty-one…”
They were at the door of the room as he spoke. The hotel owner pushed the now unlocked door open wide enough for Clara to see in.
“…this isa what I find.”
Clara peered in the door and saw Mrs Hunt lying slumped across her bed. The call button, fixed for convenience at the side of the bed, had been knocked on by Mrs Hunt’s arm, which lay against it. Clara crept into the room softly. The woman did not move.
“She is dead,” the hotel owner stated in hollow tones. “She don’t breathe!”
Clara walked to the bed and carefully lifted Mrs Hunt’s hand. She felt for a pulse in her wrist. After a couple of minutes she had to admit she could not find one. Mrs Hunt had fallen face first across her bed, she could have been struck down by a heart attack or an apoplectic fit, whatever the case, they would need to call an ambulance.
Because it was part of Clara’s nature to be suspicious about unexpected deaths (it came with the day job) she took a good look about the room for any signs that something more serious had occurred. Mrs Hunt’s luggage was standing on the floor, apparently yet to be unpacked, though probably most would not bother to empty their suitcases when they were only staying one night. Her handbag was on the nightstand, unopened. When Clara undid the clasp she saw that it was intact, Mrs Hunt’s purse and other belongings were still inside. There was no evidence of anything untoward. Clara decided it was time they summoned that ambulance. She turned to the hotel owner.
“You better call…”
Before she could finish they both heard the sound of someone taking a long, awkward breath, and the hotel owner’s face turned into a mask of horror. Clara spun round in time to see Mrs Hunt pushing herself upright on the bed. She was breathing in ragged croaks and her face was flushed. Clara would have sworn the woman was dead – at least by all the signs that she had been trained to recognise – but now here she was sitting upright. The hotel owner looked like he had seen a ghost. Clara was less astounded and more curious.
“Mrs Hunt, are you quite all right?” she asked the woman.
Mrs Hunt looked up at her. Her eyes were a little bloodshot and she was having to breathe through her mouth.
“I’m perfectly…” she coughed, “all right. Why is that man in my room?”
She was eyeing up the hotel owner, her expression disapproving.
“You pressed the call button,” Clara explained.
Mrs Hunt glanced accusingly at the button on the wall.
“I certainly did not!”
Clara was not about to argue with her. She doubted she would win.
“Would you like us to summon a doctor for you?” she asked instead.
“Certainly not!” Mrs Hunt near yelled at them. “Why would I need a doctor?”
“You had stopped breathing,” Clara persisted calmly, wondering why she was bothering. The woman was obnoxious and belligerent, and clearly not impressed by their help.
“I am perfectly fine,” Mrs Hunt wheezed.
Clara was not going to contradict her.
“You can leave,” Mrs Hunt continued.
The hotel owner, looking very relieved, headed out the door. Clara went to follow him.
“Not you Miss Fitzgerald,” Mrs Hunt called out suddenly. “I would like you to stay a moment.”
“Is that necessary?” Clara asked. If the woman was just going to be argumentative and volatile Clara really didn’t have the energy for it. Her stomach ached and she wanted to rest.
“Please Miss Fitzgerald,” Mrs Hunt’s tone abruptly softened, taking Clara by surprise. The woman was almost beseeching her. “Stay just a moment longer.”
Clara wanted to walk away, but the pathetic plea made her turn back.
“Close the door,” Mrs Hunt went back to her commanding voice as soon as she saw that Clara was obeying her.
Clara grumbled to herself as she shut the room door. She really had no call to be ordered around by this woman, she should go back to her room and be done with it.
“I will stay just a moment,” Clara said firmly. “Do you want anything from your suitcase? A nightdress perhaps?”
Like herself, Mrs Hunt was still in her day clothes.
“No, don’t bother with that. Come stand beside me, please,” Mrs Hunt emphasised her words with a beckoning hand. “I want to talk to you.”
Clara joined her by the bed.
“You are a detective?” Mrs Hunt asked.
“Yes,” Clara admitted. “What is this about, Mrs Hunt? I really am too tired to talk.”
“Then just listen,” Mrs Hunt snapped out the words. She was anxious, her breathing still errati
c and her voice raspy. “I don’t talk to strangers about private matters lightly.”
Mrs Hunt undid the top button of her blouse and this seemed to help her breathing.
“I just need you to listen. I don’t want the police summoned and I don’t want any fuss, but I need to tell someone,” Mrs Hunt rubbed at her throat. “I think someone tried to poison me.”
Clara was caught by surprise. This revelation came unexpectedly, when Clara was feeling the full weight of her weariness dragging down on her.
“That is a very serious allegation,” Clara pointed out.
“I know, but what happened to me was very serious!” Mrs Hunt was angry again and she started to cough.
Clara patted her on the back and she began to breathe normally once more.
“I don’t say such things lightly,” Mrs Hunt said. “But, I came into my room tonight and there was a parcel waiting for me on the dresser. It was addressed to me and had a tag stating it was a gift from the hotel to welcome me. I had no reason to doubt the statement. It was a very pretty and expensive box, though not very big. When I opened it, I found it contained four marzipan fruits, the sort one buys people at Christmas as an extra special treat. I am partial to marzipan and, after the disappointment at dinner, I decided to eat the fruits. I had consumed all of them bar one. I came to this last fruit, shaped like a strawberry and very detailed in its design. It had even been carefully painted to mimic the fruit. I bit into it and, almost at once, I knew something was wrong. I tasted something metallic! I spat out the marzipan at once, but I must have consumed some for, within a few minutes, I began to feel quite unwell. I don’t recall what occurred after that. Not until I roused and found you and that suspect little Italian in my room.”
Poisoned food, as Clara was well aware, was a popular means of despatching people from a distance. But she still found it hard to believe that a stranger on a charabanc tour had taken such a dislike to Mrs Hunt in the last few hours that they had attempted to kill her.
“What became of the marzipan?” Clara asked.
“I spat it out the window and, in my haste and disgust, threw out the piece that remained in my hand too.”
