The Woman Died Thrice

by Evelyn James

  The driver was in real danger of wrenching off his cap and wringing it merciless through his hands again.

  “I asked her how she felt, I truly did. She said she was fine. I can’t go around telling my passengers what they can or can’t do, especially if they say they are feeling fine. I couldn’t stop her going off alone.”

  “I don’t think anyone would expect you to,” Clara informed him gently. “She has probably just lost track of time.”

  The drive gave her a sharp look.

  “You really think Mrs Hunt is the sort of woman who loses track of time?”

  Clara had no answer to that.

  They walked along the bank for at least an hour, this time going much more briskly than on Clara’s previous saunter. They passed the place they had stopped at noon fairly rapidly, but there was still no sign of Mrs Hunt.

  “How far could she have walked,” the driver scratched his head again. “How far did you walk?”

  “We passed the spot a long while back,” Clara told him.

  The driver nodded.

  “That’s what I thought. If we don’t find her, I’m going to have to go to the police!”

  Annie had wandered a little ahead of them. She thought she had seen something in the water that was causing strange ripples. She walked a little faster, then suddenly stopped.

  “Hurry! This way!”

  The driver ran ahead, Clara hurried as best she could on her sore foot. She was already in a lot of pain from all this over exertion. She caught up with Annie and the driver in time to see the latter almost breakdown with shock. She gently nudged him away from the lake edge and peered through the rocks and reeds that masked off this small portion of the water. Just beyond them was Mrs Hunt, lying face down in the water, her arms spread-eagled, her hat floating a little distance away. Her feet were still just on land. She appeared to have fainted forward into the water.

  “Help me Annie,” Clara took one of Mrs Hunt’s ankles and Annie grabbed the other. Together they hauled her closer to them, until she was near enough that Annie could fix her arms around the woman’s waist and drag her onto the bank.

  Annie gasped with the exertion. Mrs Hunt had been heavier than she looked. Clara rolled the woman onto her back and felt for a pulse. There was none and the woman looked an ominous grey colour, but Mrs Hunt had defied death twice, could she defy it a third time?

  “I was trained in a little first aid,” the driver had recovered his composure a fraction and came forward to help. “Maybe if we clear the water from her lungs…”

  He put Mrs Hunt on her side and slapped her back firmly. There was no reaction. He laid her on her back again and compressed her chest with his hands several times, something like a pumping action, there was still no response.

  “I think she may actually be dead this time,” Clara told him.

  There was a sound of footsteps behind them as several of the passengers arrived on the scene to see what was happening.

  “Annie, don’t let them get too close,” Clara said quickly, then she turned to the driver. “As much as this looks like a tragic accident, considering yesterday’s drama, I think it prudent to summon the police.”

  The driver blinked at her rapidly. He was still trying to comprehend that one of his passenger’s was dead.

  “I thought…”

  “Mrs Hunt intimated to me that she feared for her life,” Clara interrupted him before he could protest. “I think, under the circumstances, we ought to take that fear seriously. I suggest you guide everyone back to the charabanc and drive into Windermere to alert the authorities. I shall remain here to make sure the body is not disturbed any further.”

  “Yes, oh…” the driver took off his cap and mangled it in his hands. “What will Mr Hatton say?”

  “If you manage this situation correctly he will have no cause for complaint. Now go, or the police will never get here before dark.”

  The driver finally got to his feet and took charge. He ushered away the other curious passengers, reminding them that high tea awaited them in Windermere. Annie remained behind with Clara. She sat down beside her friend.

  “Well, this was unexpected,” she observed.

  “Perhaps,” Clara sighed. “Or perhaps Mrs Hunt was well aware that someone wished her harm. Two attempts on her life failed, and now we have this.”

  “It could still be an accident,” Annie pointed out.

  “It could. This might all be some strange coincidence. I don’t think it is, but once the police are here that is no longer my concern.”

  Annie gave her an amused look.

  “You really believe once the police take over you will just let this case be?”

  “What else can I do?”

  Annie smirked.

  “What you always do,” she said. “Investigate.”

  Chapter Nine

  Clara and Annie waited a long time near the lake for the police to arrive. First on the scene was the police doctor who had wandered along the bank for a while wondering where this body he had been told about was before stumbling across the pair of women. By now the evening was setting in and the midges were out in force and hovering over the edge of the water and biting any person they could reach. The coroner swiped a hand in the air, sending several to their doom and wafting the rest away from his face.

  “Is this the corpse?” he asked, scowling at the deceased Mrs Hunt who lay on the ground unmolested by the midges, who were not interested in the dead.

  Clara thought that a wholly stupid question and was very uninclined to answer. The coroner glanced up at her.

  “Well?”

  “I’m sorry, I thought that was a rhetorical question,” Clara answered coolly. “And yes, this is Mrs Hunt.”

  The coroner gave her a surly look and dropped his medical bag on the ground. He knelt by the late Mrs Hunt and felt for a pulse. When this proved absent he removed a pair of stethoscopes from his bag and listened for a heartbeat. Then he went through a series of examinations, everything from moving her head left to right, to pounding on her chest and lifting her arms up and down. Finally he seemed satisfied that she was truly dead.

  “Drowned, by the looks,” he observed to no one in particular.

  He lifted up Mrs Hunt’s eyelids and revealed bloodshot eyes.

  “There’s a nasty bump on the back of her head.”

  “She had an accident last night,” Clara interceded. “A heavy object fell on her head.”

  “Hmm,” the coroner examined the injury for a moment more. “Yes, definitely not a fresh wound. So it looks like our victim here had an unfortunate accident. Came over dizzy on the shore of the lake and fell in, resulting in her being drowned.”

  “I can’t understand, if that were the case, why she would not call for help or even pull herself out,” Clara objected, feeling frustrated by the man. He was being of no use at all. “Unless she was unconscious, she would surely have cried out?”

  “I don’t do speculation, I merely state the facts. The woman drowned. That is unfortunate, but not uncommon, especially in an area full of large bodies of water. I see a lot of drownings and they all look like this,” the coroner stood and brushed grass off his trousers. “Now, where is the police inspector?”

  Since Clara did not know herself she also ignored this question. The coroner clearly decided that this time he would leave it as a rhetorical query. It was another half hour (Clara was keeping an eye on her watch) before the local police inspector arrived. By which time they had all been severely bitten by midges.

  The police inspector ambled along the lakeside, clearly in no hurry. He was in his late thirties, tall, lean and a dedicated smoker. He was smoking as he walked, puffing away as though cigarettes might suddenly become scarce. He had a broken nose and rather bad teeth, one at the front was missing, while the others were badly stained by nicotine. He looked more like a criminal than he did a policeman. Just before he reached the crime scene, he tossed the stub of his cigarette into the lake wat
er. The coroner was glaring at him.

  “What time do you call this?” he huffed. “I’ve stood here half an hour being eaten to death by these damn midges!”

  “I was dealing with another case,” the police inspector answered blithely, untouched by the coroner’s ire. “Two fellows got into a fight outside the local, one drew a knife and now we have one fella dead and the other tried to scarper. We caught him though. Now that was a true murder. Wasn’t going to rush it to get here for a suspected suicide.”

  “Is that what you were told?” Clara interjected.

  The inspector saw her for the first time, he had not been paying a great deal of attention to his surroundings in the evening light and had only noted the two women out of the corner of his eye.

  “Who are you?” he asked, a slight surliness to his tone.

  “Clara Fitzgerald, and this is my friend Annie Green. We found the body of Mrs Hunt who is a fellow passenger of ours on a charabanc tour of the Lake District.”

  “Aha,” the inspector said, drawing out another cigarette from a packet in his pocket. “And you don’t like the idea of suicide, then?”

  “Mrs Hunt did not seem the type. This might be an accident, or…” Clara felt she was being ignored, the inspector was busy lighting his cigarette rather than listening to her. “Inspector, I think this could be a case of murder.”

  The inspector gave a laugh, and slapped a hand on the coroner’s arm, (who responded by looking annoyed).

  “A murder! Women get such fanciful thoughts into their heads!”

  “Mrs Hunt was concerned for her life,” Clara persisted, though she was now very annoyed. “The night before last a tin of sweets had been left in her room, when she consumed them she became ill, in fact, almost died. That was when she first made me aware that she thought someone might wish her harm. Yesterday, a chamber pot was thrown down a stairwell at her and she received a bad bump to her head. Again she was concerned and confided as much in me. Now here we are today standing by her corpse, apparently she is the victim of yet another ‘accident’.”

  The inspector grinned at the coroner.

  “Sounds like we have one of those armchair detectives on our hands here,” he jested. “Any signs of a struggle or that she was held in the water, Jock?”

  “No,” the coroner said crossly, not pleased at the nickname the inspector had used. He had a Scottish lineage as long as his right arm, that the inspector seemed to take great pleasure in tormenting him over whenever he had the chance. “Can I remove the body now?”

  The inspector nudged Mrs Hunt with his foot. Clara was about fit to erupt at him for his disrespect and lack of professionalism.

  “Yes, why not? Nothing more I can tell here,” the inspector glanced at Annie and Clara. “Just got to get your statements ladies, so you found the body?”

  “Specifically I did,” Annie put up her hand, as if she was in school. She always tended to get a little cowed before authority. “We were concerned that Mrs Hunt had not returned to the charabanc. We walked along the bank to look for her and I thought I saw something in the water, then I came around this little spurt of rock and there was Mrs Hunt lying face down.”

  “You dragged her out?”

  “Yes, with Clara’s help. We didn’t realise she was dead, you see,” Annie glanced at Clara. They both knew that was somewhat of a lie. When they had come across Mrs Hunt she had looked very dead.

  “Did Mrs Hunt appear ill before this afternoon?” the inspector persisted.

  “She had not mentioned anything,” Clara answered. “But I had noticed a tremble in her hands, it seemed to cause her distress and was uncontrollable at times.”

  “That’s another thing for you to investigate, Jock,” the inspector called out to the coroner, who was being helped by the two constables who had arrived with the inspector to bag up and remove Mrs Hunt’s corpse.

  The coroner scowled at him, but said nothing. The inspector turned back to Clara.

  “So we have a sick woman strolling by herself near the water’s edge, she perhaps takes queer and falls in, or she decides she has had enough of this life and her ailments and tosses herself in the lake. Seems straightforward to me.”

  “And if there had not been any prior incidents I would have agreed,” Clara told him. “But there was the poisoned sweets and the chamber pot.”

  “Did you keep the sweets?”

  “No. Mrs Hunt threw the last out of the window and I could not find it,” Clara admitted. “But she was very unwell that night.”

  “But you told me already that she was a sick woman,” the inspector pointed out, enjoying refuting her idea. “It could have had nothing to do with the sweets.”

  Clara pursed her lips. The words she wanted to say were not polite, nor would they help the situation.

  “And what about this flying chamber pot? Another accident if ever I heard of one. I mean, who would use a chamber pot to kill someone?” the inspector laughed. It was rather a sneering sound that seemed to stem from his nose. “That would be a new one on me, death by chamber pot!”

  “Sneer, inspector, but Mrs Hunt was concerned for her life.”

  “Women, especially old women, are prone to hysterics,” the inspector shrugged. “Who is to say these ‘murder attempts’ were not all fits of fancy on the part of this woman?”

  “Mrs Hunt was the last person to have a fit of fancy,” Clara said stolidly, though she knew she was not winning, nor could she win against this obnoxious fellow. “Please do not dismiss her concerns so lightly.”

  “Don’t try and tell me how to do my job,” the inspector’s laugh turned to a snarl. “I’ve been at this game five years and made plenty of arrests, young lady, which is more than can be said for you.”

  Clara narrowed her eyes at him, dreadfully tempted to reveal just precisely what she did in her ordinary life, but she decided it was not worth the effort. The man was a buffoon and he would not listen to her.

  “If you ladies are quite done with your fantastic theories, I’ll be getting on with some real police business,” the inspector tucked his notebook in his pocket, happy that his work was done.

  “Mrs Hunt had enemies,” Clara tried one last tactic. “She made enemies like some people make friends. She was, if I may say so bluntly, an utterly cruel and heartless creature who took pleasure in the misery of others.”

  “Doesn’t sound like anyone will much be crying over her then,” the inspector shrugged, still not interested.

  “Inspector, are you really going to ignore all those facts and leave this woman’s killer to go free?”

  “We don’t know she was murdered,” the inspector pointed out quite logically. “So far all I see is a sad accident.”

  Clara wanted to call him a fool, but thought it prudent not to. She merely nodded.

  “So be it inspector, but if I happen to come across information that might change your mind how can I contact you?”

  The inspector was amused by this suggestion.

  “Hop into the nearest police station and ask for Inspector Gateley. They’ll probably be able to tell you where I happen to be at the time. But, and I say this for your own best interest, don’t start prodding around and making more of this matter than needs be,” Inspector Gateley threw aside his cigarette, narrowly missing the coroner’s shoe. “There is a reason we don’t have female police inspectors. Women are too emotional and too fanciful. They see foul play at every turn. I don’t need you playing detective and upsetting people. Get on with your holiday and leave this to us. After all, you didn’t know Mrs Hunt very well, did you?”

  “We met on this trip,” Clara admitted.

  “So then you have no reason to worry about the fate of someone who was a virtual stranger to you,” Inspector Gateley was satisfied with himself. “There will be an inquest, I imagine, best you ladies don’t go disappearing before then. Hopefully it will be all arranged and dealt with before your little holiday is over.”

  Without another
word the inspector walked off behind the coroner. Clara heard him mutter to ‘Jock’ in the darkness.

  “Get the inquest over and done pronto, so I can get rid of those two amateur sleuths.”

  She silently seethed with outrage. It was one thing to not be taken seriously, but to be so insulted as well! But there was nothing she could do. She was out of her own territory where she knew the police inspector and was a respected detective. Here she was nobody.

  Annie slipped her arm through Clara’s.

  “Let’s get back to the meeting spot. The driver said he would drop everyone off at the hotel and come back for us. And don’t let that awful inspector upset you.”

  Clara sighed as she allowed Annie to lead her away from the crime scene.

  “I suppose I shouldn’t care,” Clara said as they walked. “I detested the woman after all. But she had asked for my help and you can’t just ignore a person being murdered.”

  Clara stumbled a little. Her foot felt like a swollen, hot ball on the end of her leg. She was in a lot of pain and only her fury with the inspector was keeping it from overwhelming her. She focused on being angry with him rather than her foot.

  “Now you have met this Inspector Gateley, what do you intend to do?” Annie asked, slowing her pace subtly to help Clara.

  “I’ll have to make my own enquiries,” Clara groaned a little, but even she was not clear on whether that was because of the thought of playing detective on her holiday, or because her foot hurt so much. “I can’t just let a murderer slip away. Despite what the inspector said, I do think that someone was trying to harm Mrs Hunt. The tin of poisoned sweets was a sophisticated plan, the last two attempts were far more opportunistic.”

  “But, as far as we know, Mrs Hunt knew no one aboard the charabanc?”

  “I start to wonder if that was true,” Clara said. “I have a feeling Mrs Hunt was deceitful as well as unpleasant.”

  They found the charabanc awaiting them at the meeting spot. The driver rushed from his cab to help Clara aboard.