by Evelyn James
“What a novel idea!” Clara said, playing along. “Isn’t it odd that you are the second person to mention chamber pots to me, the first was another guest who was telling me how Mrs Hunt had had a misfortune with one of the things!”
“Mrs Hunt?” Mrs Crimp looked perplexed. “Oh, is she the opinionated woman who sits at the back of the charabanc and makes comments about people? I have been avoiding her. But, yes, you are right, she has not come down for dinner.”
“That’s because, just a few hours ago, she was mysteriously struck by a falling chamber pot.”
Mrs Crimp’s eyes went wide.
“Truly?”
“That is what I am told. It fell from nowhere and landed right on her head.”
“Is she all right?” Mrs Crimp asked.
“As far as I am aware she is,” Clara assured her. “She has opted to stay in her room for tonight, however. She has a nasty bump.”
“I can well imagine. I wonder how it happened?”
“I couldn’t say. Perhaps a careless maid? Your chamber pot is presumably intact? Wouldn’t want to discover it was cracked in the night, would you!”
Mrs Crimp roared with laughter. It was a sudden and loud sound that took Clara by surprise. In fact, it took quite a few people around the table by surprise and caused a brief pause in the consumption of dinner.
“Oh my,” Mrs Crimp dabbed her eye with a handkerchief she retrieved from her handbag. “Excuse me, but your suggestion brought such an image to my mind… well…”
Clara was not inclined to ask what that image was.
“As it happens, I personally collected the chamber pot from a cupboard where such things are kept. I wouldn’t normally, but when I had asked about it the maid mentioned they were kept in a cupboard we had to pass to reach my room. It was therefore no bother to retrieve one as we went past.”
“There is a cupboard of them?” Clara asking, feigning astonishment.
“Only about a half dozen of the things,” Mrs Crimp shrugged her shoulders. “In an old armoire along the landing from my room on the third floor.”
“Makes you wonder why anyone would be throwing the things around,” Tommy interjected, of course, he was in on the notion that someone was out to kill Mrs Hunt, but before Mrs Crimp he wanted to give the impression of complete innocence of this idea. “They are hotel property, after all. People shouldn’t be so careless.”
“It was probably an accident,” Clara said, joining in with the pretence. “Just very unfortunate for Mrs Hunt.”
“Children causing mischief, perhaps?” Mrs Crimp added. “Though I haven’t noticed any children in the hotel. I don’t suppose anyone saw who did it?”
“Apparently not.”
The conversation paused as the main course was served. Chicken in a white wine gravy, with seasonal vegetables. It looked a meal far easier on the stomach than that Clara had eaten the day before.
“I suppose it was an accident?” Mrs Crimp suddenly said as she carved into her chicken breast. “I mean, the relevant people are certain of that?”
“What else could it be?” Clara played dumb.
“Oh, you know, a prank gone wrong, perhaps?” Mrs Crimp waved her hand in the air. “I’m not making a great deal of sense, but, you see, I had noticed she was inclined for upsetting people. The sort of person who finds fault wherever she looks and likes to say so.”
Mrs Crimp paused in the middle of eating and stared down the length of the table, though not looking at anything in particular.
“It occurred to me that someone who was of a foolish persuasion and did not realise the consequences, might have thrown the chamber pot at her,” Mrs Crimp toyed with this idea a moment. “Yes, as soon as you said what had occurred it made me wonder. I mean, chamber pots do not simply fly off by themselves! And, I really find it hard to imagine how it might have accidentally been cast at her. How was the person not seen, for a start?”
“It was on the stairs,” Clara explained. “The chamber pot fell down from a higher floor.”
“The third floor?” Mrs Crimp asked.
“I don’t know. No one saw it coming.”
“And no one confessed to the matter,” Mrs Crimp nodded. “I see, yes, it all sounds a little too odd.”
Clara had to admit it wasn’t your usual sort of accident, not one to be easily explained away. As Mrs Crimp said, chamber pots did not magically take flight.
“I find it hard to imagine Mrs Hunt upsetting someone so dreadfully in the short time we have been on this trip for them to contemplate harming her,” Clara eventually said. It was the truth, after all.
“People do spur of the moment things,” Mrs Crimp countered. “Oh, but don’t imagine I was retrieving the chamber pot for just such a thing! I honestly would not and mine is still in my room.”
“I believe you,” Clara reassured her. “Anyway, why would you want to harm her?”
“True, I have managed to avoid her so far. She is one of those people I dread getting into conversation with. I really wonder why she came on this trip at all, seeing as how she seems to detest everybody and want to make them all unhappy,” Mrs Crimp gave a ‘tsk’ under her breath. “Why do those sort of people exist, I ask myself. What misfortunes of life have turned them so bitter? Mrs Hunt, and I don’t say this lightly, but Mrs Hunt is one of life’s nasty souls who take pleasure from making others miserable.”
“Do you think so?”
“I do. I have heard her speaking to a few people aboard the charabanc and none have come away from their chats, shall I say, unscathed?”
That was a telling remark, but it did not surprise Clara. Her own encounter with Mrs Hunt had been less than pleasurable. Still, it was one thing to dislike a person and another to want to kill them. A brief conversation in a charabanc with a stranger seemed flimsy motive for murder, didn’t it?
“I see I have you thinking?” Mrs Crimp winked at her. “It is certainly a strange thing. Mrs Hunt probably ought to speak to the police, but I doubt she will.”
They finished dinner on a pudding of stewed fruit and clotted cream, and Clara found herself aching for her bed. She had not slept the night before and it had been a long day. She walked towards her room with Tommy and Annie. They were all housed on the ground floor as neither Clara or Tommy were up to much stair climbing, though Clara could if it was really necessary as she had demonstrated earlier. Their rooms were next to each other, with Clara’s the furthest along. She said goodnight to her travelling companions and was headed to her room when a door even further up the corridor opened and the doctor who had attended Mrs Hunt emerged.
Clara noted the man looked a little dishevelled. His tie was draped loose about his neck and his hair was roughed up as if from sleeping. He glanced up as he closed the door to the room and saw Clara. For a moment he looked a little surprised, then he regained his composure.
“Oh, so you are on this floor too.”
“Yes. I’m afraid I never asked your name,” Clara said, the doctor seemed inclined to hurry down the corridor, so she deliberately stepped away from her door to prevent it. “Are you on holiday or business, Dr...?”
“Business,” the doctor answered brusquely, his exit denied. “I have been called up to visit an old patient who has taken ill on holiday.”
“Oh, how awful,” Clara sympathised with the patient. “As you are here on business, might I ask you to look at my foot?”
The doctor looked down at Clara’s feet. Her right one was visibly bandaged and only just able to squeeze into her shoe.
“I had an accident a few weeks ago,” Clara told him. “My own doctor stated I was well enough for this trip, but I am in a lot of pain tonight and wonder if I have damaged the foot again. Might you look at it?”
This was all bunkum for the doctor’s sake. Clara’s foot felt fine. But she was curious about this man and his strange behaviour. The only way to nab him for a little longer was to give him a medical problem to deal with. The doctor sighed.
They went into Clara’s room and she removed her shoes. The doctor carefully felt her foot and it was not hard for Clara to grimace and wince at certain points, for her foot was still sore and bruised.
“I don’t think there is any great harm done,” the doctor concluded. “Just rest it.”
“Thank you. Now, how much would you like for the consultation? I shall write you a cheque,” Clara reached for her handbag.
“No bother, really,” the doctor stood up and hastened for the door. “I don’t expect payment.”
“Well, at least let me thank you properly. I still don’t know your name!”
The doctor hesitated for a long moment. Why he was so reluctant to reveal his identity Clara could not say, but finally he spoke.
“Dr Masters,” he said, clearly expecting a reaction from Clara. When he received nothing but a smile he added. “Dr John Masters.”
“Thank you for your assistance Dr Masters,” Clara said happily. “If I have a problem with my foot again, might I ask for you once more?”
Dr Masters was clearly still expecting some other response from her and seemed bamboozled by her lack of a reaction.
“Yes,” he said, still baffled. “Goodnight.”
He let himself out of her room. What an odd man, Clara thought to herself. He had clearly been expecting her to recognise, or at least to react to his name, but it rang no bells with her. She wondered just what trouble the good doctor had found himself in, for he certainly acted like a man with something on his conscience. Another little mystery to solve, Clara mused. She lay back on her bed, forgetting to undress in her weariness, and very soon was asleep.
Chapter Eight
The first true day of the Fitzgerald holiday dawned. According to the brochure kindly supplied by the charabanc company, their first day in the Lake District was to commence with an excursion to Windermere, the largest natural lake in England. The brochure went on to explain that Windermere had been a popular holiday destination since a railway branch line had been extended there in 1847.
Clara thought a peaceful day by the waters of Windermere sounded just what the charabanc party needed to refresh and revive them. Therefore she was eagerly down for breakfast, freshly changed into her walking attire. She was intrigued to see that Mrs Hunt had joined them, clearly the woman was feeling better after her unpleasant encounter with a chamber pot. Clara was intent on avoiding her, however, she didn’t need her relaxing day ruined by the woman’s vitriol.
The party was due to depart just after ten. Clara found herself in the hotel lobby examining a selection of postcards the establishment offered for sale. She thought that perhaps she ought to send one back to Oliver Bankes in Brighton, her photographer friend and occasional accomplice. It seemed to be the thing to do. She was distracted from a pretty hand-tinted card that showed the picturesque road leading to the hotel by the arrival of Eleanora Smythe. The woman seemed to be greatly distressed, wringing a handkerchief between her fingers and giving occasional sniffs as if just about or just finished crying.
Clara paused her browsing to turn to the woman.
“Are you all right Miss Smythe?”
“Please don’t talk to me,” Miss Smythe hurried past in the direction of the dining room, the handkerchief surreptitiously dabbing at one eye.
How curious, thought Clara, what reason could Miss Smythe have to be in such a state? She found herself unconsciously glancing around for Mrs Hunt, as if that woman was responsible for every calamity befalling the charabanc party. She was almost disappointed not to see her.
The charabanc departed at ten on the dot. Clara wedged herself next to Tommy yet again, while Annie had opted to sit behind. She had been dubious about the rather continental style breakfast served at the hotel, and was still semi-convinced they had all been poisoned by the lack of boiled eggs and black pudding. She wouldn’t admit it to anyone, but she was homesick and didn’t really want to make conversation. So she sat behind the Fitzgeralds and told herself it was only for a few more days longer that she must endure this ordeal.
Windermere proved as pretty as the brochure had suggested. A thin mist was hovering over the surface of the lake, but their driver informed his party with certainty that this would soon burn off in the sunshine. The party disembarked and was shown to a pleasant rambling path around the lake’s edge by the conductor. Everyone was free to roam as they pleased for the next few hours, as long as they returned to the charabanc by two o’clock when the driver had instructions to take them into the nearby village for high tea.
Full of a good breakfast, (Clara had not been fazed by its ‘continental’ style) the Fitzgeralds and Annie set out at a gentle pace, keen to test their respective stamina. Tommy insisted on walking, though his wheelchair had been brought as back-up and the girls took it in turns to push it.
“Look, is that a heron?” Tommy raised his arm skyward as across the centre of the lake flew a greyish, long bird.
Clara could not say precisely what sort of feathered beast it was. She was just content to nod and assure Tommy that it must be. They paused by the water and watched it ripple about the lake edge.
“Beautiful day,” Henry Wignell came up behind them, wife in tow. “Once the mist burns off it will be glorious.”
Clara turned and smiled. Wignell, as always, seemed jovial and delighted to simply be there. His wife looked a tad sour-faced, but that might just have been her natural expression.
“It is beautiful,” Clara agreed.
“You know, the name ‘Windermere’ is thought to translate from an old Germanic name, either ‘Winand’ or ‘Vinand’. It has old Norse roots, or so my little guidebook says. So, at some point many centuries ago a chap called Winand walked this way and had a lake named after him,” Wignell commented, a man who loved facts, especially when they related to a place he was visiting. “Another interesting point, the lake is more than 11 miles in length, but less than a mile in width. Oh, and it contains 18 islands!”
“I suspect they know quite enough about Windermere now,” Mrs Wignell interrupted. “Why don’t we go look for that island you mentioned that can only be seen when the water is a certain depth?”
“Bee Holme? Oh yes, I want to see that, the mist permitting. Good day, friends, have a very pleasant time,” Henry Wignell tipped his hat to them and sauntered off with his wife.
“Chatty fellow,” Tommy smirked when he was gone.
“Enthusiastic,” Clara said. “And that is much nicer than the gruff attitude we would receive from Mrs Hunt, who, I am relieved to say, appears to have wandered in her own direction.”
“She was on the charabanc,” Annie observed.
“Well, let’s not talk her up. I am enjoying the view and really don’t need her obnoxiousness ruining it,” Clara said firmly and they all made the determined effort to push Mrs Hunt from their minds.
The day became brighter. The mist on the lake, as the driver had said, burned off and it began to get quite hot for walking. The trio took their time wandering along the lakeside and by noon had agreed to rest beneath the shade of a large tree and share the bottle of ginger ale Annie had stashed in the wheelchair. Clara was beginning to feel quite relaxed, even her foot seemed to hurt less. The weather was just right to induce her to doze and she drifted off beneath the tree leaves with no one complaining.
When she woke a good hour later her companions were debating whether they ought to start sauntering back along their route, considering the time their out-journey had taken it seemed wise. They set off for the charabanc, the lake glistening at their side and some distant birds calling out a gentle harmony in the trees.
The charabanc driver had spent the day reading a newspaper and sleeping. He was not much of a fellow for walking, he much preferred the power of an engine to get him from A to B, and had been content to relax in his usual seat. The conductor had wandered around the near edge of the lake, casting stones into the water and mulling over the
contents of a letter he needed to write to his girl back in Brighton. Neither were in any rush to leave, which was just as well as the passengers returned in dribs and drabs. By quarter past three it seemed everybody was aboard, but the conductor was duty bound to check the passengers off a list he had prepared when everyone first boarded. It was only then that it was noted Mrs Hunt was missing.
“Give her five more minutes,” the driver suggested, stretching back in his seat and clearly in no hurry.
Five minutes came and went without any sign of Mrs Hunt. A ripple of uncertainty went through the air. It was Mrs Siskin who finally said what everyone was thinking;
“She had that bump on her head yesterday, what if she has felt queer and fainted beside the lake?”
The conductor gave an anxious glance to the driver, who scratched his head beneath his cap.
“I suppose we better go look for her.”
Almost everyone descended from the charabanc again and offered to assist the search. It was in their best interest, if they wanted high tea, to find the elusive Mrs Hunt. The passengers were split into parties of three, with Clara and Annie joining forces with the now decidedly worried driver. Tommy had been persuaded to stay aboard the charabanc as he was already exhausted from his walk.
The various search parties fanned out around the lake and began to walk the perimeter. Everyone had their eyes open for a person lying under a tree, or stretched on the ground, and they stopped other walkers who they passed asking if they knew anything.
The driver was now very concerned.
“Why did she go walking off on her own?” he asked Clara as they paced the lake’s bank.
Clara had her eyes on the rippling water, expecting any moment to see a hand or a foot just beneath the surface.
“There was no call for it,” the driver persisted. “What with that bump on her head she took yesterday.”
