by Evelyn James
“Who is this lady?” Inspector Wake asked, handing over a plate of biscuits.
“Her name was Mrs Mildred Hunt, late of Brighton. She drowned in Lake Windermere just the other day. The strangeness of the matter is that ten years ago she was here acting as tutor and chaperone to a young lady who also drowned in the lake. Mrs Hunt had returned after all these years to pay her respects to her former pupil.”
“And who was the girl?” Inspector Wake asked.
“Miss Wignell. As far as I can ascertain it was believed at the time that she had drowned herself. The circumstances were not suspicious.”
“And now they are?”
“Now I am concerned that someone is blaming Mrs Hunt for the girl’s death. Or it may be all coincidence. But she drowned in the same spot as her pupil did, and there had been attempts on her life beforehand.”
“Now, Miss Fitzgerald, you have aroused my curiosity,” Inspector Wake smiled. “I am, obviously, no longer able to reference files in the police station, but I do recall certain cases.”
“Do you recall the case of Miss Wignell? It can’t have been long before you retired.”
“Miss Wignell,” Inspector Wake mused. “I do recall the death of a girl in the lake, but not the name. She was a slip of a thing, had been out painting when the incident occurred. My impression from the parents was that she was prone to dark moods and might have taken her life while in one of these.”
“Yes, that is the case I am referring to,” Clara agreed, feeling hopeful. “Was there anything suspicious about it?”
Inspector Wake thought for a while, trawling through his memories on the subject.
“Not particularly,” he said at last. “Though it was rather sudden, and there was the odd fact that when she was dragged from the water she was still holding her paintbrush. That stuck with me. Why take a paintbrush with you to commit suicide?”
That was an odd detail.
“Perhaps she was so overcome she didn’t think to drop it before she threw herself in?” Clara suggested, though she felt it a rather flimsy notion.
“I have attended a lot of suicides over the years, Miss Fitzgerald,” Inspector Wake said, pulling together his white eyebrows until they formed a snowy ridge over his eyes. “I have found, in most cases, that the urge is neither sudden nor without serious forethought. In general, there is a thoroughness to the preparations, a certain sense of finality comes over the person and they aim to finish their affairs before they depart. I have never know one to be suddenly taken on a whim to kill themselves, nor to depart so rapidly from this earthly plane that they did not conclude their affairs first. I have known people to pay their bills, cancel the milk and tidy the house before killing themselves, but not the other way around.”
“The paintbrush in her hand implies Miss Wignell was not expecting to die, in your opinion?” Clara pressed.
“Everything pointed to suicide, Miss Fitzgerald, a stray paintbrush is nothing to make a case on. But it did strike me that everyone was rather too swift to rule out an accident. Perhaps the girl, trying to get a better view of the lake for her painting, had stumbled through the reeds at the bank and tumbled in? Perhaps her tutor, who I might add I found to be extremely hard of hearing, did not hear her in time? Or perhaps she simply did not rouse from her sleep?”
“In either case, it would be easy to lay the blame at Mrs Hunt’s feet.”
“It would indeed. I only recollect the woman vaguely, but she was not someone who was particularly likeable, and the death of an only child is a deeply distressing thing. I ask myself, in cases like this, how would I have felt? How would I have reacted? I dare say I would not have been as gracious as the Wignells were.”
Clara thought that a very good point. But there was one question she had to ask.
“Did anything suggest to you that Miss Wignell had been murdered by her tutor?”
Inspector Wake gave a rather dramatic sigh and puffed out his cheeks as he contemplated the question.
“If memory serves me rightly, I thought the tutor rather cold over the whole affair. I mean, she hardly seemed distressed by her charge being found drowned. Yet, I rather suspected that was her nature. No. I don’t think I was concerned it was murder.”
“Thank you Inspector Wake, this has been most helpful,” Clara rose and the retired inspector showed her to the front door.
“I assume you have had the debatable pleasure of meeting my replacement at the station,” Inspector Wake rose those snowy eyebrows of his as he opened the door for her.
“Inspector Gateley? Yes, I have.”
“I didn’t choose him,” Wake said with a look of satisfaction. “All policemen have their flaws, but he is exceptionally pig-headed. I doubt you will get very far with him.”
“That I have already concluded,” Clara nodded, adding her own sigh.
“If you do happen to find anything suspicious about the Wignell case I would appreciate being told. Unlike my successor, I am not opposed to being gently told I was wrong.”
“If I discover anything new I shall let you know,” Clara promised before she said goodbye.
While she had not discovered anything revelatory from Inspector Wake, she had enjoyed their conversation and it was good to know she was not alone in feeling that Inspector Gateley was allowing his arrogance to blind him to facts. She headed back to the hotel, making a brief stop in a local bookshop where she found a pamphlet that would serve her purposes very well.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Clara shook out her umbrella on the hotel’s large doorstep and then strode into the foyer. She was a little sodden around the edges and rain drops splattered from her folded umbrella as she returned it to the stand. She was glad to be indoors and out of the dismal weather.
“Miss Fitzgerald.”
Clara glanced up and saw that Mr Stover was glaring at her in the fine way he alone was capable of. Clara wondered what she had done to annoy him now.
“Mr Stover, do you require something?” Clara asked in her most pleasant manner, there was no point infuriating the man further while she remained under his roof.
“Dr Macguire has called for you,” Mr Stover said, still looking irritated by her presence. “He is awaiting you in the main lounge. He would not tell me what it was about and insisted on waiting despite my telling him that I had no idea how long you would be.”
Clara smiled at the hotel manager, formal to the last, and headed for the main lounge. It was fuller than it had been on past days, since many of the hotel guests had opted to stay indoors out of the rain. A fire had been stoked in the large fireplace and several guests were loitering around it. Including, Clara noted, the strange girl who looked only a meal or two away from starvation. She seemed to feel the cold dreadfully and was wrapped up in a thick shawl by the fire. Dr Macguire, on the other hand, was sitting by the window, drinking tea and watching rain fall down the panes of glass.
“I hear you have been waiting for me?” Clara came to his chair and took the one opposite.
“I have, Miss Fitzgerald. Would you care for tea?” he indicated that he had a second cup at the ready. “You look a little damp, if I might say so.”
“I have walked into town and back,” Clara explained. “And yes I would like tea.”
Dr Macguire went through the processes of pouring milk into the porcelain cup followed by steaming tea. He offered the sugar bowl, but Clara declined.
“Have you been waiting long?” Clara asked as she took her cup.
“No, hardly a moment really. I felt it important to come and see you,” Dr Macguire paused. “I fear I owe you an apology, Miss Fitzgerald.”
“Oh?” Clara said, intrigued.
“When last we spoke I was rather dismissive about your concerns. However, your suspicions had me intrigued and I conducted a few further tests on the remains of Mrs Hunt. In particular I looked at her stomach contents, a most enlightening part of the human body I oft find.”
“Quite,” Clara said, t
rying not to think of such things while drinking her tea.
“I tested the contents and the results were surprising, well, to me at least. Mrs Hunt was positively full of sleeping powder, the strong stuff doctors prescribe.”
Clara clattered her teacup into its saucer as she jumped in excitement at this news.
“Mrs Hunt was drugged?”
“Most certainly. The quantity would have rendered her unconscious, that was how she could be dumped into the lake alive without making any commotion. It seems I and the Inspector were wrong to dismiss your concerns so out of hand.”
Clara was taking in this revelation. Trying to fit it together with the other pieces of information she held.
“A hotel guest has reported her sleeping powders stolen,” Clara said, thinking of Mrs Wignell. “It just so happens she has motive to want revenge on Mrs Hunt.”
“Care to tell me the name of this person?” Dr Macguire asked.
“Not just yet, for I have several other suspects as well. But this is the information I needed. Now I know how it was done, the why is not so complicated, I have enough people with motive about this place, all that is left is ‘who’. Who had the opportunity and the means to drug Mrs Hunt?”
“The only other item in Mrs Hunt’s stomach was strong tea,” Dr Macguire added. “I would say that is how the deadly dose was administered. By the way, there was enough of the sleeping powders in her stomach to be dangerous in itself. Even if she had not been thrown into the lake, she might well have died. I assume the killer offered her tea, much as I did to you.”
Dr Macguire gave a morbid smile and Clara cast an eye at her teacup.
“That is not amusing,” she told him.
“But quite the way it was done. The powders would have taken effect quite rapidly, say half-an-hour at the most? That must narrow your field of suspects. Judging by Mrs Hunt’s temperature and condition when we arrived on the scene she must have been dead around four to six hours.”
“Meaning she was killed around lunchtime,” Clara nodded. “The murderer offered her fresh tea with her sandwiches. The question is who had the facilities to brew up a pot?”
“Tea can be carried in one of those German Thermos flasks,” Macguire pointed out. “I have had hot coffee from such a thing.”
“Have you tried tea from a Thermos? It tastes ghastly,” Clara shook her head. “I can’t see Mrs Hunt being persuaded to drink that. No, it was freshly made, I am sure of it. So someone must have brought a portable stove along with them on our trip to Windermere. It would be the only way to brew a pot of tea by the side of the lake. But I can’t think of anyone who was carrying a bag that might have contained it.”
“I shall have to leave the idea with you,” Dr Macguire slurped the last of his tea from his cup. “I wanted to let you know my findings first, because I had been so crass before. But now I must go to Inspector Gateley and tell him.”
“Thank you, Dr Macguire, this has been much appreciated,” Clara stood and shook his hand.
He departed with that curious smile of his on his face.
Clara was excited, this news finally justified her suspicions, but there was more to be done as yet. As she went to replace her teacup on the tray with the teapot, she felt something heavy in her pocket and she was reminded of the key she had had made. There was no time like the present to see if it worked. She took one last look about the lounge, (no one was paying her the slightest attention) and headed upstairs.
The corridors were deserted at this time of day, except for the odd maid going about her chores. Clara doubted anyone would pay attention to her opening a room with a key, even if they were around, she would look much like any other guest entering their room. She slipped the new key from her pocket and hoped the locksmith’s work was as good as his lead soldiers.
The key fitted into the lock on Blake’s door smoothly, but that was not surprising, she was more concerned about whether it turned. She took a look first left then right, up and down the corridor, to ensure no one was about and then she turned the key. There was a click in the lock and the door opened easily. Clara was impressed, the locksmith had truly been a master of his craft, but she did not have time to dawdle. She entered the room and shut the door behind her.
Because Blake’s death was deemed an obvious suicide (and because Inspector Gateley took very little interest in such cases) the police had not even bothered to search through his belongings as yet, and the room was exactly the same as it had been on the day Blake had hung himself from the light fixture.
Clara inspected the three-armed brass light that was installed in the ceiling. One arm was distinctly bent out of shape from bearing Captain Blake’s weight. It was not hard to visualise the man hanging there and Clara grimaced to herself. If she was going to kill herself, she would not choose to slowly throttle to death at the end of a leather belt.
Captain Blake had kept his room in neat order, having formed a habit in the army for disciplined tidiness. Even two years after he had returned to civilian life (he had been formerly discharged in 1919) he had retained an almost obsessive need for cleanliness. Clara found herself looking at a room that was well-ordered, a room where chaos was not to be tolerated. It seemed remarkable, in a way, that Captain Blake had chosen to hang himself here and create disorder in his formal little world.
Clara started to search about. The drawers of the dresser were empty and the wardrobe contained three shirts, one pair of trousers, a smart jacket and a tie. Captain Blake had been wearing his remaining clothes and his shoes when he went to meet his maker. Clara searched the pockets of the jacket and trousers, and came upon a small velvet covered box that looked extremely familiar. She opened it to see a medal, identical to one that resided in a drawer at their home in Brighton. Just like Tommy, Captain Blake had been issued with the medals that commemorated the end of the war and all those who had served in it. Unlike Tommy, Captain Blake clearly took a pride in his trinket. Tommy could not even look at his. Clara returned the medal to its hiding place and moved on.
Captain Blake’s suitcase was under the bed and virtually empty, though there was a book lying in it, a novel that appeared completely unread. The bedside cabinet proved more fruitful; Captain Blake had kept his diary in it. Clara took up the book with its black leather cover and flicked it open. It was one for this year, 1921, and it seemed Blake had been consistent about filling it in every day. Clara flicked the pages until they became blank, then she scrolled backwards to the very last entry;
“May 6th. Tuesday. Can’t bear this place much more. People walk around pretending there wasn’t a war and that everything is just the way it was. I despise them all. I am sick and tired of everything. The pain continues, despite the doctors telling me it should be gone by now. I don’t think I can take it anymore. I met another ex-soldier in the music lounge. He wanted to talk about the war, about how we all felt afterwards. Couldn’t stand it, wanted to tell him to shut up! Talked about this new-fangled idea called ‘shell shock’. Maybe I have that. I certainly don’t feel the same as I used to anymore. Sometimes I don’t even feel sane. He made me angry with him, with myself, with everything. The anger makes me reckless. When it comes over me I start to think of ways to hurt myself. That is the only thing that sates it.”
“Oh dear,” Clara said, knowing full well who the ex-soldier Blake had talked to was. She didn’t like to think that something Tommy had said during their conversation had resolved Blake to suicide.
She was flicking back through the pages when something fell out of the diary. It was a loose page that had been ripped free and wedged at the front. It dropped to the floor and Clara scooped it up.
“May 7th. Wednesday. To whoever reads this, though it does not matter now and I am in no position to suffer further I want to make one thing plain. My aunt’s death was not at my hand. My aunt was Mrs Hunt, a woman I loathed for the way she treated my late mother, and yet, at the same time, as the sole remaining member (aside from myself) of my family, a
woman I wanted to know better. I had hoped this holiday would enable that, but I found her a cold, shallow creature who took no more interest in me than she had when I was a boy.
“Her disdain made me angry, reminded me of all the hurts she had caused my mother. Some nights my mother would weep over the sister she would never see again, who had turned against her so bitterly. Her dying words were not for me, but for Mrs Hunt, a woman who did not deserve them. She expressed her longing one last time to be reconciled with her sister. I could not fulfil my mother’s final wish, but I had thought to try and make peace with my aunt as a compromise. But the more I saw of my aunt, the more my hatred grew for her. She was wicked and had broken my mother’s heart, and she did not even care.
“On our first evening in this hotel, having shared far too many hours on a charabanc with Mrs Hunt, my hatred overwhelmed me. I saw Mrs Hunt coming up the stairs and, in a thoughtless fury, I grabbed the nearest thing to hand – a chamber pot – and threw it down at her. She was struck and fell on the stairs. I thought I had killed her and instantly regretted my actions. Thankfully she survived. This is then my confession, I tried to kill my aunt but I did not succeed and the failed attempt shook me enough to deter me from trying again.
“I know some wonder if I might have murdered her. I did not. She died in the lake for a reason I don’t know, but it was not at my hand. Still, I now find myself utterly and totally alone in this world, my one connection to my past is gone. There is a pain in my chest, my doctors tell me it is not my heart, at least not in any medical sense. But there is still that pain. I wake with it. I go to sleep with it. It has left me so weary. I cannot see anything ahead for me. For months now I have contemplated my own death, I don’t know what stopped me, but finally I am resolved. I just wished it to be known, before I leave this life, that I am not a murderer and I did not kill my aunt.
“Captain Robert Blake, Berkshire Regiment. 1921”
Clara restored the letter to the diary so that a policeman might find it, if ever any came to look for such a thing. At least she now knew she was not dealing with two murders. Captain Blake had taken his own life. And now she knew who was behind the chamber pot affair. She found herself looking sadly at the bent light fitting once again. How awful, and how utterly pointless.
