by Evelyn James
“Rather like fighting a bloody war,” Tommy interjected. “Even if it is being fought for the right reasons and you win, there are all those lives lost or damaged along the way that you can’t do anything about. The outcome sometimes seems very costly.”
“Do you feel like that with all your cases?” Agatha asked. She had become quieter, listening hard, imagining what it was like to be in Clara’s shoes.
“No, not all cases. But very rarely is an ending entirely happy. After all, I am investigating a crime, which means someone has already been hurt. Sometimes irreparably. I can find it challenging, but I would rather I was doing it then someone who didn’t care, who was just out for the money or the glory.”
“I see,” Agatha was quiet. “Clara, do you think a woman makes a better detective than a man? It is something I have been mulling over.”
“No, not better,” Clara smiled lightly. “Just different. Women think in a different way to men.”
Clara ate a sandwich in the hush that followed. While she answered Agatha’s questions her mind was still on the poison pen case and, of course, Brompton. She had hardly begun to unravel that mystery. She was also wondering how Oliver was.
“Well, I fear I have already taken up too much of your time,” Agatha rose from her chair. “Thank you for talking to me, Clara. It has been most illuminating.”
Agatha was seen to the door, and then Clara collapsed in her armchair and gave a sigh of relief. She kicked off her shoes, stretched out her stockinged feet and wriggled her toes.
“What were the Whites like?” Tommy asked her.
“Pleasant,” Clara replied. “Oh, Mrs White gave me this, thought it might be a clue.”
Clara fudged in her handbag and produced the piece of chromed metal. She handed it to Tommy.
“It certainly looks like something off a car,” she added.
Tommy turned it over in his hand.
“Part of the wheel trim, perhaps?” he suggested. “Do you want me to see what I can find out?”
“Do. By the way, did you find out about Colonel Fairbanks?”
“Oh yes, rather more than I wanted in fact,” Tommy laughed. “I got his address out of the Post Office directory, and then I had this idea of calling Colonel Brandt at his club and seeing if he knew the man. Colonels tend to flock together, you know, especially when they end up in the same town.”
“No doubt Colonel Brandt was pleased to help,” Clara was fond of the Colonel who she had met on a previous case. He was a rather lonely old man who she regularly invited over for Sunday dinner. Colonel Brandt liked to talk about old times and the army, but he was a mine of information once you knew how to channel his train of thought in the right direction.
“Brandt always is. We had a long chat over the ‘phone. I dare say that butler fellow they have in the Club lobby was getting agitated over how long we took! In any case, Colonel Brandt knew at once who I meant, because Fairbanks is a member of the Club too, though he doesn’t visit all that often, perhaps once or twice a month. Brandt has played golf with him on a few occasions – claims he cheats, by the way,” Tommy grinned. “Brandt says the old boy retired from the Met around 1911 and moved down to Brighton for the sea air. But he hasn’t quite been able to give up policing and has been known to interfere in local cases. Not so much recently though, for his health has deteriorated. He lives alone in a pretty villa and has a passion for model aeroplanes. He was involved in the Jack the Ripper case, you know.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Clara answered. “Though, not a case the police wish to boast about, considering Jack got away.”
“Colonel Brandt was a bit uncertain of what exactly was wrong with Fairbanks, he thought it might be lung or heart related. He served in Africa before he became a policeman. Those were the days when an army man could almost guarantee himself a decent position in the police force when he gave up on shooting people. Apparently, Fairbanks rose through the ranks pretty swiftly and was good at his job too.”
“Is he liable to be too ill to speak with me?”
“Brandt didn’t think so, more a case that he doesn’t travel far from home.”
“So, another piece of the puzzle. Is he on the telephone?”
“There was no number in the directory.”
“I shall write him a letter then. Tommy, what is wrong with Annie?”
Tommy gave a groan.
“She dislikes Agatha,” Tommy dropped his voice to a whisper. “For some absurd reason she is jealous of her, seems to think I am about to run off with her.”
Tommy indicated the craziness of this idea by gesturing at his wheelchair.
“Oh dear,” Clara sighed. “Best we all watch what we say then.”
Clara almost jumped out of her skin as Annie then appeared in the doorway.
“Is she gone?”
“You can see that Annie, else you wouldn’t ask,” Tommy gave her a wink. “She has gone away to plot out the best time for our elopement.”
Clara kicked Tommy hard on the shin.
“Ow!”
“You can be horrid Thomas Fitzgerald,” Annie said with a hurt sniff. “I shall serve dinner now.”
“You are a fool,” Clara snapped at him, as soon as Annie was gone.
“I was only teasing!”
“You don’t have even half an idea how women think or feel,” Clara ‘tsked’ at him. “The sooner you apologise the better.”
Tommy looked sullen.
“After dinner,” he said.
Clara glowered at him.
“Fine!” Tommy took hold of the wheels of his chair and awkwardly negotiated his way out of the room.
Clara watched his retreating figure and found she was smiling to herself. She closed her eyes and sank into the chair a little further. What was it with men and misunderstanding women? One thing she knew for sure, the quality of her dinner would heavily rely on harmony between Tommy and Annie. When Annie was in a temper she was prone to burning things. She was just hopeful Tommy could repair the damage before Annie’s first class dumplings suffered the consequences.
Chapter Thirteen
After writing a letter to Colonel Fairbanks, Clara made her way on Thursday morning to the police station. She was going to go through the files on Brompton’s accident and, if she was lucky, have a word with Constable Alfie Ling. The sergeant on the desk was his usual grumpy self when he saw her. She showed him her special pass-card, issued by Inspector Park-Coombs, and he had to let her through, though he didn’t look pleased about it.
The archives room had been moved into the basement since the last time Clara had used it, and she had to trudge down concrete steps and find the light switch, before entering a room where a naked bulb hummed as it hung from the ceiling. She stared around at the racks of files and boxes. Everything had yet to be sorted into its correct place, and there were several piles of cardboard folders sitting on a long table. Clara really hoped Brompton’s file was not among them.
She started to follow the alphabetical ordering on the racks. As she came to the corner of a stack, she almost stumbled across a man crouched on the floor. Clara found herself just looking at the man for several moments, before it dawned on her that he might be dead. He was a policeman, certainly, the uniform told her that much. But there was a nasty swelling on his head just above the left temple, and he didn’t seem to be breathing. It was several more moments before Clara realised she was looking at James Brompton. He was in his old constable’s uniform. But why was he here, crouched over a box with a bump on his head the size of a chicken’s egg? There was no time to waste; Clara bent down and felt for a pulse. Brompton was breathing, but it was shallow and uneven. Clara looked around her for any sign of what might have happened. She was fairly certain this was no accident. Brompton had come here for a reason and the way he was crouched near a box of files suggested he had been looking for something, but what? The box had a slip on the front that indicated it came from the ‘C’ section. If Brompton was looking
for his own file and details of his accident, he wouldn’t find it in this box.
Clara took another look around the room. She had to fetch help, but she wasn’t prepared to leave Brompton alone in a room where his attacker might still lurk. She could not see anyone among the stacks. After a further moment’s hesitation she ran for the archives door and darted into the corridor. In the same instant Alfie Ling appeared from nowhere and collided with her.
“Miss Fitzgerald?”
“Constable Ling, call for a doctor at once and send Inspector Park-Coombs down here!”
Alfie Ling blinked at her, uncomprehending.
“At once Ling, at once!” Clara commanded in her most authoritative tone, her fears for Brompton overriding any concerns she might have at speaking to an officer of the law in such a way.
Ling blinked again, looking like a confused mole that had just popped its head above ground. Then he came to a decision and ran for the stairs out of the basement. Clara returned to Brompton and sat down beside him. What was he doing here? And in his old uniform too? Well, perhaps the latter was fairly explainable. If someone wanted to get down to the archives of a police station, the easiest way to do so without attracting curiosity was to be in a police uniform. Brompton would have waited until the Desk Sergeant was suitably distracted, then walked passed him towards the back of the station. The busy Desk Sergeant might have glimpsed a blue uniform, but would have paid little attention to who was in it.
However, Clara had not suspected that the man she had met in the hospital filing room could be capable of such subterfuge. Could she have been mistaken? Clara wasn’t sure. The one thing she had learned during her time as a detective, was that people were complicated and full of surprises. Suggesting you ever knew someone else absolutely was sheer arrogance, in her humble opinion.
Clara was relieved when the door to the archives opened and someone entered. Inspector Park-Coombs peered around the stacks.
“Clara?”
“It’s Brompton again.”
The Inspector came around the shelving and stared in disbelief at the crouched man on the floor.
“What is he doing here?”
“I suspect he was looking for something,” Clara pointed to the box of files in front of the injured constable. “As you can see, someone has taken another swing at him. But I think they were disturbed before they could kill him, perhaps even by my arrival, though I saw no one in here when I entered.”
“There is another door at the far end,” Park-Coombs said, indicating towards the far side of the room with a finger. “They may have slipped out that way as you came in.”
Clara pursed her lips, contemplating how she had raced into the corridor and bumped straight into Alfie Ling. Was Annie right, after all, and the troublesome child had grown up to be a dangerous man.
“The doctor is on his way,” The Inspector knelt by Brompton and peered into the man’s face. “Clara, I would like you to leave, this needs to be dealt with as police business only.”
Clara didn’t speak at once. She waited for the Inspector to look up at her.
“You asked for my help.”
“I know, but this situation has taken a nasty turn. If someone is prepared to attack a constable in a police station, then I can hardly ensure your safety, can I?”
“You forget. I have a vested interest in finding who is responsible too. Someone in your station allowed Billy ‘Razor’ Brown to escape and come after me. I could have been killed or badly hurt. I am not inclined to ignore that fact.”
“I don’t want to see you hurt Clara. I shall speak with my superiors and have a proper investigation put in place.”
“And send the culprit to earth?” Clara cocked her head to one side. “Not to mention risking your own position. Your superiors will likely transfer you.”
“If not force me to retire for allowing such a mess in the first place.”
“Precisely, and then where shall I be? The new Inspector may not be so accommodating to my snooping,” Clara fixed the Inspector with her most firm and determined stare. “You have no option but to let me help, I won’t allow you to cut me out of this case. We shall find the traitor and deal with him before wind of this reaches your superiors.”
The Inspector was silent several moments, then he smiled.
“You already have a suspect in mind,” he said.
“I do, but equally I could be wrong. I won’t tarnish a man’s reputation without good reason.”
The conversation ended with the opening of the far door and the doctor arriving. The police doctor mainly dealt with drunks in the police cells, or brawlers with cuts and bruises. He was surprised at the scene that greeted him, and raised his bushy grey eyebrows before whistling through his teeth.
“What have we here then?”
The Inspector met Clara’s stare, then turned to the doctor.
“Not entirely sure, but we think something fell on the constable’s head as he was retrieving some files. A heavy box, maybe?”
The doctor squeezed between a stack of papers and managed to cause several brown files to flutter to the floor in the process. It was certainly a plausible excuse, considering the current untidy nature of the archive room. He dropped to one knee beside Brompton.
“Looks like a bump from hitting something hard, perhaps even the edge of one of these shelves. Your constable perhaps tripped, banged his head, and then crumpled backwards into this position,” the doctor said.
“Quite probably,” Park-Coombs agreed without hesitation. “I really must have some of our officers in here to tidy things up a bit.”
“An accident waiting to happen,” the doctor looked around him at the overloaded shelves and the stacks of files placed haphazardly on the floor. “I see this sort of thing all too often. Household accidents used to take up most of my time when I was in private practice. People place things down without thinking of the hazard they might cause.”
The doctor tutted as he examined Brompton’s head.
“Has he been conscious at all?”
“No,” Clara answered.
The doctor looked at her for the first time, and his expression asked the unspoken question ‘who are you’.
“Clara Fitzgerald,” Clara offered a hand to shake. “I came down for a file.”
“Clara does some outside work for the police,” the Inspector added. “Background material and such.”
The doctor looked unconvinced, but Brompton then groaned and provided the distraction they all needed.
“I’ve sent for an ambulance,” The doctor turned back to the Inspector. “The constable who fetched me was not particularly enlightening on what the nature of the injury was, so I decided to play on the safe side of things.”
“Very good.”
“It should be here soon,” The doctor rocked back on his heels. “However, I think he will come out of this with a bad concussion and nothing more serious. Tell him to be more careful in future.”
The Inspector swore he would. They wasted some time in idle chat – the doctor providing a lengthy lecture on the general nature of head injuries – while awaiting the ambulance. Clara soon came to the conclusion the doctor’s knowledge of anything more challenging than a bump or a scrape was decidedly limited. She supposed being a police doctor was rather a niche calling, and did not generally require much in the way of medical expertise. Anything more serious than a split lip or a cut forehead and the doctor would summon an ambulance and leave his patient in the care of the hospital. The doctor had no call to expand his quaint, old-fashioned knowledge of medicine; he had long since retired from private practice and being the police doctor supplemented his pension nicely, and provided the means to regularly enjoy the full social delights of the local golf club. Had the situation been different, Clara would have disliked the man for his ignorance, as it was, she was grateful for it. He didn’t ask difficult questions and he accepted their explanations without hesitation, when another man might have been concerned.
>
When the ambulance finally came, Clara was glad to see Brompton’s care being handed over to people with a little more sense. He was starting to rouse as they placed him on a stretcher and gingerly carried him upstairs.
“I shall give it an hour or two and then pop over to see him,” Park-Coombs said as Brompton was taken away. “I’ll need to pay a call on his parents first.”
“I had assumed policemen gave back their uniforms when they were no longer part of the force?” Clara asked quietly.
“We let Brompton keep his because of the circumstances,” Park-Coombs sighed. “I never expected to see him in it again.”
Clara picked up the heavy box of files that had been at Brompton’s feet and glanced inside. None of the names on the case files rang any bells. For a moment Clara almost found herself believing Park-Coombs explanation that Brompton had bumped his head by accident. Perhaps he had? Wasn’t that possible? Then she shook off the idea. There were too many unanswered questions to consider this a case of pure coincidences. Brompton was down here for a reason. He was looking for something. She would visit him later and see if he could reveal anything, even just his reason for being down here. In the meantime, it was fast approaching the hour of her next appointment with one of the poison pen victims.
Clara said her farewells to Park-Coombs and headed out into another dull February day. What complicated lives people made for themselves, she was thinking, as she stepped onto the pavement and pulled up her coat collar in the face of the cold, whistling wind.
From behind her Alfie Ling appeared. It seemed he had been waiting for her.
“Will he be all right?” he asked Clara.
She turned sharply.
“Who?”
“Constable Brompton,” Alfie wrung his hands together, they were red and swollen from the cold. “Will he be all right?”
