The Woman Died Thrice

by Evelyn James

“I fetched the police as fast as I could!” he told her as she grimaced in pain. “I saw them taking the body away.”

  “They think it was an accident,” Clara answered as she was helped onto a seat.

  “I’ll have to report all this to Mr Hatton,” the driver said anxiously. “It’s never happened to me before.”

  He went to his own seat and started to drive off. The charabanc had been left ticking over while he aided Clara aboard.

  “Have you back at the hotel shortly!” he promised her.

  Clara closed her eyes and cringed. Her foot was a mass of agony and she was very concerned she had made her old injury a good deal worse. Annie pressed a comforting hand on her shoulder, but said nothing. There was nothing to say, after all. Clara tried to blot out the pain as they trundled sedately back to the hotel.

  Chapter Ten

  Annie helped Clara hobble to her room and set her down in a chair.

  “I’m going to find that doctor who saw Mrs Hunt,” Annie informed her, disappearing before Clara could argue.

  Clara scowled at her foot, as if that would make things better. It throbbed horribly and even acting carefully it was agony to remove her shoe. She was just giving a groan when someone knocked on her door. Annie had left the door slightly open and Clara shot her head up quickly, thinking she would see the doctor. In actual fact it was Mrs Siskin standing on the threshold of her room.

  “May I come in?” Mrs Siskin asked politely.

  “Yes, if you don’t mind my puttering as I try to remove this shoe.”

  “Can I be of any assistance?” Mrs Siskin came across the room and started to bend down to help Clara.

  The last thing Clara wanted was someone else yanking at her foot.

  “No, I am just fine. See? The shoe is just about off…” Clara pulled at the heel one last time and the walking boot fell to the floor, revealing her swollen foot.

  Clara wanted to say something very rude about the pain that followed, but bit her tongue in the presence of Mrs Siskin. The woman seemed not to notice her distress and perched herself on Clara’s bed without asking. She sat there a moment, toying with her hands.

  “Are you all right Mrs Siskin?” Clara asked after a moment.

  “Me? Oh yes, dear,” Mrs Siskin’s anxiety seemed to belie this answer. “I’ve just been thinking all evening about Mrs Hunt. Lizzy keeps talking about it.”

  “Has it upset Mrs Palmer?”

  “No,” Mrs Siskin looked away, trying to decipher the faint pattern in the carpet on the floor rather than speak. “Lizzy seems quite pleased about it, to be honest.”

  Mrs Siskin sighed.

  “It is a peculiar world.”

  “It is.”

  “Lizzy took a very strong dislike to Mrs Hunt. Well, you saw what happened. Lizzy is of a delicate mind frame and you can’t just go around saying mean-spirited things to people like that,” Mrs Siskin shook her head. “I can’t say I liked Mrs Hunt either, but I didn’t I wish her harm. I suppose I thought the odd unpleasant thing about her. Maybe that is why I feel so guilty.”

  “Guilty?” Clara said, quite surprised. “What do you have to feel guilty about?”

  “I suppose…” Mrs Siskin pressed her lips together. She was a big-hearted woman by nature, who had a tendency to attract the waifs and strays of this world to her. It was how she had come to befriend the lonely and rather batty Mrs Palmer all those years ago. Mrs Siskin liked to help people and there was a part of her that felt she should have helped Mrs Hunt. Only she hadn’t because her friend had taken such a strong distaste to the woman. “I saw her walking along the lake. She passed by me and Lizzy. She was on her own and looked very pale. I wanted to ask her to join us, but I felt I couldn’t. I still wonder, if I had of done, whether she would have not fainted and fallen into the lake.”

  “Is that what the driver said? She fainted?”

  “He muttered something about it,” Mrs Siskin nodded. “He was rather upset. Have you noticed how he wrings his cap dreadfully in his hands when he is anxious? He will need a new cap soon. Well, he came back to the charabanc and said we could all stop looking for Mrs Hunt as she had been found. I believe it was Mr Wignell who asked if she was all right. The driver shook his head and declared, rather quietly, that she had had an accident in the lake. We rather quickly came to the conclusion that she must have felt unwell after her accident yesterday and fallen in.”

  “That seems very possible,” Clara said carefully. “It is certainly the line the police inspector is pursuing.”

  “How sad. You see, after we realised what must have occurred that was when I began thinking. If only I had asked her to walk with us, then she would not have been alone when she took ill. Perhaps we could have saved her,” Mrs Siskin’s shoulders slumped at the imagined burden she placed upon them. “Not that Lizzy would have liked that. I can’t tell her any of this, she would have a fit. She had this awful smile on her face when we heard. I think she feels the woman received her just deserts!”

  “If it is any consolation, I really doubt Mrs Hunt would have walked with you,” Clara said gently, hoping to comfort the woman and ease her guilt. “She was a person who liked to be alone.”

  “Yes, I had noticed that too,” Mrs Siskin sighed. “I thought that rather sad. But some people prefer to be alone.”

  “You should not feel guilty about anything,” Clara added firmly. “You caused her no harm, after all.”

  “No, that is true,” Mrs Siskin was looking more relieved by the moment.

  There was a tap on the open door and Dr John Masters looked into the room.

  “Oh, I best let you be,” Mrs Siskin hopped from the bed. “I hope your foot feels better, I don’t suppose all that wandering about today did it any good.”

  “Thank you Mrs Siskin,” Clara said as the woman vanished out the door.

  Dr John Masters wandered in. He dropped his medical bag on the bed and glanced at Clara’s foot.

  “What have you been doing?” he asked.

  “Discovering dead bodies,” Clara said drily, only a moment later realising how awful that sounded.

  The doctor didn’t seem to notice.

  “The news is all about the hotel. No one can keep a secret here for long. Mrs Hunt drowned, or so they say,” Dr Masters knelt before Clara. “I’ll need that stocking off.”

  Clara thought he might turn his head as she wrestled to find the top of her stocking under her skirt, but Dr Masters did not. He kept his eyes averted onto her foot, but that was the best she was going to get. Clara felt uncomfortable as she reached under her dress skirt and found the end of her stocking. She rolled it down, adjusting her skirt hem as she went, until the stocking was a rumpled bundle around her ankle. Dr Masters, without a word, removed it from her foot.

  “The foot is very swollen,” Dr Masters pressed his fingers into the hot flesh of Clara’s foot and made her cringe. “I shan’t be able to tell for sure whether you have done lasting damage until the swelling goes down. I shall see if the hotel is able to provide some ice in a large bowl that you could rest your foot in. Failing that, I shall have you sent some very cold water.”

  Dr Masters stood and opened his medical bag.

  “Would you like anything else? A sedative, perhaps?”

  “The pain is not all that bad,” Clara declined. “Unless I move my foot.”

  “I didn’t mean for the foot,” Dr Masters cast her a look out of the corner of his eye. He was almost smirking. “I meant for the shock of finding a dead woman.”

  “Oh, I have seen more than one corpse in my time,” Clara said blithely, the pain in her foot was really damaging her normal inhibitions.

  “You see dead people a lot, do you?” the doctor asked curiously.

  “I was a nurse, during the war,” Clara said quickly. “You rather get used to bodies doing something like that.”

  “Then you should also know better than to walk about on a crushed foot,” Dr Masters said more sternly. “I doubt you have
seriously damaged it, but you will have certainly impeded the healing.”

  Clara didn’t like being berated, especially as she had had no choice but to walk about. Mrs Hunt wasn’t going to find herself.

  “I am sure I will live,” Clara said stoutly and to deflect further admonishments she added. “How is your patient? The one you were called here to see?”

  “Nearly ninety and convinced she is dying,” Dr Masters said bluntly, though not without a twinkle in his eye. “She takes a shine to the idea of a holiday, but then she gets here and everything is different and she is not in her usual room or following her usual routine and she becomes unsettled. I tell her to stop the holidays, but she is convinced they are good for health. The irony of it all! She will be right as rain in a couple of days and off collecting postcards for one of her many albums. Then she will be home, telling me all about how marvellous the Lake District is for one’s lungs.”

  Dr Masters gave a shrug.

  “Ah, so that explains why she has a room on the ground floor,” Clara added.

  “Oh no, she is in a suite on the fourth floor. There is a lift…” Dr Masters paused, the realisation that he had just given himself away crept over him, visibly causing the colour to rise in his face.

  Clara had seen him coming out of a room on the ground floor the other day. She would have imagined he was visiting his patient in that very room, had he not just revealed otherwise.

  “I imagine your patient is one of these people who get rather set in their ways,” Clara said thoughtfully, pretending she had not noticed his change in demeanour. “The sort who prefer sheets to quilts, who prefer their food English and overcooked, the sort who dislikes indoor plumbing, fearing it unhygienic.”

  “You describe my patient well,” Dr Masters said quickly, aiming to get out of the room as fast as possible. “I’ll see that something is arranged for your foot. Good evening Miss Fitzgerald.”

  “Good evening,” Clara answered, watching him hurry away and wondering what secrets he was trying to hide. Who, after all, was in that room just down the hall?

  “Has the doctor been?” Annie was in the doorway now.

  “Been and gone. He is arranging some iced water to be sent to me in a bowl that I must rest my foot in.”

  “That sounds disagreeable,” Annie wrinkled her nose. “I hate cold feet. Worse than cold hands in my opinion. I was thinking, I have to arrange for your dinner to be brought to you here, so why not Tommy and I both join you?”

  “That is a delightful idea,” Clara agreed. “And, under normal circumstances, I would immediately agree. But tonight I want you and Tommy to do something else for me.”

  Annie gave a small sigh.

  “Why do I get the feeling this is going to involve investigating something?”

  “You said it yourself Annie, what can I do but investigate? That police inspector has a bee in his bonnet which will blind him to everything else around him. You saw how he spoke to me, he is already convinced that Mrs Hunt fainted and drowned by accident. Perhaps that is the case, but he will not even investigate the possibility of something or someone else being responsible.”

  “Could Mrs Hunt have really been killed?”

  “I don’t want to rule out the possibility just yet, not after the two previous attempts on her life,” Clara shook her head. There were too many odd ends left over if you just accepted the idea that Mrs Hunt had fainted and drowned. None of the other pieces fitted, unless you began to ask yourself if it was perhaps just possible that she was murdered. “In any case, I would like you and Tommy to go to dinner as normal and listen to what everyone is saying.”

  “Spy on them?” Annie said.

  “It is not spying if they can see you sitting there and listening,” Clara assured her, though she thought that excuse would not cut mustard within international politics, but sitting up a dinner table with fellow charabanc passengers was another story. “I just want you to find out their thoughts and feelings on the matter. If someone is a killer, then the odds are we are looking at the charabanc passengers as suspects.”

  “Well then,” Annie said, a little deflated. “I guess that means I will have to get dressed for dinner yet again.”

  “Sorry, old girl,” Clara apologised. “I would much rather you had dinner in here with me, but we have to take this case seriously, since nobody else is inclined to.”

  Annie nodded.

  “Do you think anyone is sorry that Mrs Hunt is dead? I mean, everyone seems quite jolly about it,” Annie shook her head and tutted. “It seems rather callous.”

  “Mrs Hunt was disliked, that’s for sure, but in truth most people are not affected by deaths that do not directly relate to them. For most of these people in the hotel Mrs Hunt’s death is just another piece of interesting gossip.”

  “Well that’s very sad,” Annie said sternly. “The poor woman might have been hard and unpleasant, but I can’t think she deserved to die so alone and so suddenly.”

  Annie had just finished speaking when a hotel porter arrived at the room door with a big, white enamel bowl in his hands. It proved to be, as he lowered it next to Clara, a bowl of iced water. Ice cubes floated on the top like miniature icebergs. Having asked if he could offer them anything else, and being told they were fine, the porter retreated, closing the door behind him.

  Clara stared at the iced water.

  “I hope that doctor knows what he is talking about,” she raised her right foot and plunged it toe-first into the bowl. The water was freezing and made her wince as a new type of pain soared through her foot. She managed to drop her entire foot in before she puffed out her cheeks and swore in pain.

  “Bloomin’ foot!”

  “I’ll be off to dinner,” Annie smiled at her. “Behave yourself. I’ll drop by later if it is not too late in the evening.”

  Annie left the room. Clara rested back in her chair and tried to forget the new icy fire burning in her foot. At least she could not feel the original pain anymore. Didn’t people get frostbite in such cold conditions? She hoped she would not suddenly discovered her foot going black and threatening to drop off. That would be most embarrassing.

  Amused by this assessment of the situation, Clara pretended she could not feel her foot at all, which wasn’t so hard as it was rapidly going numb. She let out a deep breath. At least while she was alone she had plenty of time to mull over what had occurred to poor Mrs Hunt. Perhaps, for once, she might be lucky and be able to conjure the solution to the mystery without hardly trying. Somehow she rather thought not.

  Chapter Eleven

  Clara had fallen soundly asleep in her chair when there was a knock on the door. She opened her eyes groggily and automatically went to stand, remembering too late that she had her foot in a bowl of icy water. She stood, slipped, stumbled, kicked the bowl across the room in the process, spilling water everywhere and fell onto the rug before the bed.

  “Oh rats!” Clara scowled to herself, more annoyed than hurt.

  The door burst open (it was unlocked since Clara had not had the energy to get up and lock it after Annie left) and Dr Masters darted in. He looked at Clara, the wet floor and the bowl lying upside down halfway across the room and relaxed a little.

  “You are rather accident prone,” he said.

  Clara gave him a look that implied he was walking on treacherous ground.

  “Other people are accident prone. I suffer from minor mishaps caused by the inanimate objects of this world conspiring against me,” she told him firmly.

  “You fell over the bowl of water?” Dr Masters interpreted.

  “Yes! I fell over the bowl of water,” Clara said grumpily. She was now sitting in an upright position. “Might I add, whose idea was it to place my foot in a bowl of icy water?”

  Dr Masters actually smiled at her, which was quite novel.

  “I take full responsibility,” he said, offering her his hand and helping her back into the armchair. “How does the foot feel?”

  “I
can’t honestly say as it is utterly numb,” Clara answered. “Which explains why I fell.”

  “Were you asleep?”

  “Only a little.”

  Dr Masters nodded.

  “Next time I will aim not to disturb you so late,” he knelt down before Clara and lifted her foot in his hand.

  “Is it late?” Clara asked, her idea of time completely out the window with falling asleep. She could at least see that it was dark outside.

  “It is nearly eleven,” Dr Masters said, prodding her foot quite hard to feel the bone. “The swelling has gone down considerably. I assume none of this hurts?”

  “I don’t feel a thing,” Clara shrugged. “I didn’t realise time had got on so. They brought my dinner at seven and I ate that before setting the dishes on the sideboard…”

  “You took your foot out of the bowl?” Dr Masters accused her, one eyebrow raised in a stern look.

  “Merely to place the plates and cutlery in a safe place, else there would be more chaos around us about now,” Clara pursed her lips, uncertain what to make of the doctor. “I sat back down at once. Then, I suppose, I fell asleep.”

  “You were probably exhausted from finding bodies,” Dr Masters said, displaying an art for black humour. “You are quite the talk of the dining room. I hear tell you are a private detective.”

  Clara glanced at him, wondering if the statement was accusatory. After all, she had hidden, or rather omitted, the fact she was a detective during their last conversation. She found Dr Masters impossible to read at that moment. He simply seemed curious.

  “I am a private detective,” Clara said carefully. “Though currently I am on holiday.”

  “So you are not investigating Mrs Hunt’s death?” Masters asked bluntly.

  Clara hesitated again, she wasn’t sure how much she wanted Masters to know about her, but she really couldn’t hide the fact that she was involved with Mrs Hunt’s case. She also wasn’t convinced she trusted Dr Masters completely. He had a secret too and it had not eluded her that he came rushing down the stairs shortly after Mrs Hunt was clunked on the head by a falling chamber pot. Potentially Dr Masters had been on the same floor as Mrs Hunt’s attacker.