But if she didn’t, she had a horrible feeling that something awful was going to happen.
CHAPTER 11
Wiggins smiled cheerfully as he came into the kitchen. “You’re up already, Mrs. Jeffries. Cor blimey, you’ve even got the tea ready.” He walked toward the table, slipping on the suspender that had been hanging loose over his shoulder.
“We’re the early birds,” she replied. She poured his tea and put it in front of the chair next to hers. “Sit here. I want to talk to you before the others get up.” She couldn’t believe her good luck. Wiggins was usually the last one up in the mornings.
Mrs. Jeffries hadn’t slept very well. She couldn’t shake the feeling that if she waited until after the wedding to nudge the inspector toward an arrest, it might be too late. On the other hand, she didn’t want to take any action that might damage the wedding plans.
In the wee hours of the morning, she’d come up with what she hoped was a solution to her dilemma, but it would involve a bit of subterfuge on her part. She’d realized she couldn’t let any of them, except for Wiggins, know she’d come up with a solution to this case.
Everyone in the household was already excited and nervous about the wedding, and the last thing they needed was any additional conflict about whether or not they should act now or wait until the reception was over.
“What’s wrong?” His face creased with worry as he sat down.
“Nothing is wrong,” she assured him hastily. “I just need you to do something for me today. Something you can’t tell the others about.” She reached over and touched his hand. “This might be difficult for you, because I know you don’t like keeping secrets from the people you care about.”
Wiggins’ eyes widened in alarm. “You’re scarin’ me, Mrs. Jeffries. What’s this about?”
She pulled back. “You have to promise that you’ll do what I ask and not say anything to anyone, especially Betsy or Smythe. Can you do that? I could be wrong about this course of action, and if I am, we’ll have worried them for nothing.”
“Alright.” He took a drink of tea. “I promise I’ll hold my tongue. What do you want me to do?”
“Your wedding clothes are upstairs, right?”
“They’re in the cupboard. Why do you want me to put them on now? It’s a bit early. The weddin’s not till two thirty.”
“No, I just wanted to be sure you had them at the ready. If I’m correct in my assumptions, when you come back, you might be a bit pressed for time.” She took a deep breath, then told him what she suspected might happen today and what she needed him to do.
“Corse I’ll do it.” He nodded his head for emphasis. “But what are you goin’ to tell the others when they get up and I’m gone?”
“I’ll think of something,” she replied airily. “And if I’m wrong, if you see . . .”
“I’ll come home quick as a wink,” he finished as he got to his feet. “Let me get my coat and hat. It’s cold out there.”
“You’ll miss your breakfast. I’ll wrap some scones for you to take with you.” She got up. “But do hurry. Mrs. Goodge will be up any minute now, and if she sees you leaving, they’ll be no end of questions.”
“Where’s Wiggins?” Smythe asked for the tenth time. “ ’ E should be here. He’s my best man.”
“I’ve told you,” Mrs. Jeffries said calmly, “I’ve sent him out on an errand for me. Besides, it’s only gone nine o’clock. You’ve plenty of time before the wedding.”
Smythe paced across the kitchen and stared out the window onto the road. “I know I’m actin’ like a ninny, but I’d thought Betsy would be here this mornin’.”
“It’s bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the weddin’,” Mrs. Goodge said. “That’s why we sent her off to stay with her sister and brother- in-law today. She’s havin’ breakfast with them and gettin’ dressed there. They’re leavin’ tomorrow so this is her last chance to spend any time with them.”
“What time will she be back?” He swung around and came back to the table.
Mrs. Jeffries rolled her eyes. They’d been over this half a dozen times. “Norah and Leo are bringing her here in a hansom this afternoon. She’ll be back at two fifteen at the earliest. By then, you and Wiggins will be on your way to the church. At two twenty, Ruth will send her carriage here and Betsy and the inspector will get in and drive around to the church. Mrs. Goodge, Lady Cannonberry, and I will be walking across the garden to the church, and Phyllis will be left in charge to supervise the waiters and insure that all is ready for the reception.”
Smythe took a deep breath. Blast a Spaniard, he was as nervous as a kitten in a room full of bulldogs. “So I won’t be seein’ ’er before the weddin’.”
“That’s the whole point,” Mrs. Goodge snapped. “Again, I’ll say it slowly so you’ll understand. It’s bad luck for the bride and groom to see each other before the weddin’.” The cook wasn’t in the best of moods. She knew that Mrs. Jeffries was up to something. Wiggins was missing, she wouldn’t say where she’d sent him, and she kept watching the clock as though she expected something to happen.
“Why don’t you go to Howards? You can take some carrots or an apple to the horses,” Mrs. Jeffries suggested. “I’m sure Bow and Arrow would like a wedding day treat. They’ll not see you for the next week. They’ll miss you.”
“That’d get me out of the house,” Smythe muttered, more to himself than to them. “I’m goin’ to walk a hole in the floor if I stay here.” He grabbed his coat off the peg and started for the back door. “Right then, I’ll go. The horses always calm me down when I’m het up. You tell Wiggins when he gets back to wait ’ere for me. We need to walk to the church together. I want to make sure ’e’s there on time. I don’t like ’im disappearin’ like this.”
“He hasn’t disappeared. He’s running a small errand for me. But I will make sure he stays here,” Mrs. Jeffries reassured him.
He nodded and headed off down the corridor. A moment later, the back door slammed.
“Alright.” Mrs. Goodge, who’d been standing by the cooker, turned and faced her. “What’s goin’ on? Don’t try to tell me you’ve sent Wiggins off on an errand, either. I can see that’s somethin’s happened. You’ve been watchin’ the clock and you’ve got that look in your eye. You’ve sussed it out, haven’t you?”
“I think so,” Mrs. Jeffries replied. “But I wasn’t sure what to do about it. I suspect that Tobias Sutton might try and stop Rosemary Evans’ wedding. That’s why I sent Wiggins off—I sent him to the Evans house. If Sutton does try to stop it, he’ll probably go there first rather than the church.”
“Why would he do that?” The cook came back to the table and sat down in her spot.
“Remember yesterday when Luty said she believed Sutton knew that Rosemary was his daughter?”
Mrs. Goodge nodded. “That’s why Sutton was hangin’ around the neighborhood when he slipped and fell on that crack in the pavement and got rescued by Eleanor North. It sounds reasonable enough. But what’s that got to do with it? From what we’ve heard about the man, he’s a spineless sort.”
“I agree that he treated Agatha Moran very badly. But the fact that he was trying to keep an eye on his daughter leads me to believe he cares about the girl. That being said, if he cares, he’ll not let her marry a monster like Sir Madison Lowery.”
“Is Sutton our killer then?”
“I’m not completely sure of that,” she answered. “I think it might be someone else, but I could be wrong. Oh dear, one moment I’m sure I’m right and the next I’m riddled with doubt. Let me tell you what I’ve come up with. I want to hear your opinion.” She relayed her theory about the killer and how she’d come to the conclusion that it might be best to wait until tomorrow to mention anything to the inspector.
“I’m sure Betsy would appreciate not havin’ her weddin’ ruined,” the cook said dryly, “but what I don’t understand is why you didn’t tell the rest of us what you suspected.”
&
nbsp; “You saw how Smythe was acting,” Mrs. Jeffries said defensively. “He’s so nervous about the wedding he can’t remember anything for more than two seconds, and I certainly wasn’t going to say anything to Betsy. This is her big day.”
“You could have told me earlier. I shouldn’t have had to pry it out of you,” Mrs. Goodge charged. “I thought we were friends . . .”
“We are friends,” Mrs. Jeffries retorted, “and I am telling you.” She broke off as the back door slammed and they heard footsteps pounding up the hallway. Both women stood up as Wiggins came running into the kitchen.
“We’ve got trouble,” he announced. “Jeremy Evans is missin’. Tobias Sutton barged in to see him, and twenty minutes later, Evans just walked out the front door. Somethin’ bad is going to ’appen. I can feel it. I was standin’ right there on the pavement when he come chargin’ down the walkway. Mrs. Evans come runnin’ after ’im, screamin’ that he’d better not do anythin’ to ruin the weddin’, and he just yelled back for her not to worry, there wasn’t goin’ to be a weddin’.”
“Oh my Lord,” Mrs. Jeffries exclaimed as she realized exactly what was going to happen. “He’s going to the Lowery house. He’s going to kill Sir Madison . . .”
“Sutton must have told Evans the truth about the blackguard.” Mrs. Goodge frowned in confusion. “But why would Evans have murdered Agatha Moran? That’s the part I don’t understand.”
“Because he thought she was going to ruin his daughter’s life,” Mrs. Jeffries said.
“What if he only heard part of the conversation between Agatha and Arabella Evans on that Monday afternoon? What if he didn’t realize why Agatha wanted the weddin’ stopped? But we don’t have time for speculatin’ about who did what. We’ve got to do somethin’.”
“What?” Wiggins cried. “The only thing that makes any sense is gettin’ the inspector to the Lowery house before someone else is killed, but I don’t see how we’re goin’ to do that.”
Mrs. Jeffries stopped and stood stock-still. Her mind worked furiously to come up with a solution to this sudden turn of events. “We’ll have to use the anonymous note trick.” She hurried over to the pine sideboard and pulled open the top drawer. “Luckily, the inspector has become so famous, an anonymous letter shoved under the front door is a reasonable way for someone who wished to keep their identity secret to communicate with him.”
“You think it’ll work?” Mrs. Goodge asked worriedly. She glanced toward the back hall as she spoke, making sure the inspector hadn’t come down to the kitchen. “I know we’ve used it before, but . . .”
“But we don’t have a lot of choice right now,” Wiggins cried. “Someone’s goin’ to die if we don’t get our inspector movin’.”
Mrs. Jeffries pulled out a piece of paper and a pencil. She propped the paper on the sideboard, wrote out a short message in crude block letters, folded the sheet in half, and then handed it to Wiggins. “Run upstairs with this, tell the inspector we just found it, that someone just shoved this under the front door this morning.”
Wiggins grabbed the note and raced out of the kitchen.
“I hope this works,” Mrs. Goodge muttered.
“So do I,” the housekeeper replied. “I’m going upstairs. I may need to do a bit of encouraging to get the inspector out of the house this close to the wedding time.”
She reached the foyer just as the inspector and Wiggins came down from the upper floors. Witherspoon turned and stared quizzically at Mrs. Jeffries. “Wiggins said someone shoved this note under the door.”
“Yes sir, I know. I was there when he found it. We looked outside, but we didn’t see anyone. When I saw what it said, I told him to take it right up to you.”
Witherspoon sighed heavily. “I do hope this isn’t a hoax or someone’s idea of a joke. I can’t in good conscience ignore it, not when it says Sir Madison Lowery is going to be murdered this morning.”
“Of course not, sir,” she agreed. “But you can’t go alone, sir. If the message in the note is correct, there could well be violence. You must take some constables with you.”
“I’ll get some lads from the station. It’s on the way,” he replied as he went to the coat tree. “We can get a hansom from there to Bayswater. I say, this is decidedly bad timing.”
“It certainly is, sir,” she agreed.
“Do tell Betsy that no matter what happens, I’ll be back here by two twenty.” Witherspoon grabbed his coat and hat and hurried out the front door.
Mrs. Jeffries turned to Wiggins. She wasn’t going to take any chances with the inspector’s safety. “You know where Sir Madison lives, right?”
“Corse I do. He lives on Monmouth Road. I’ve been there twice in the last week tryin’ to find a servant or someone to get a bit of information out of, but I’ve ’ad no luck. You want me to go there?”
She was thinking fast. “How far is Lowery’s home from Luty’s?”
“They’re in Knightsbridge, so it’s less than a mile,” he replied. He looked down the staircase and saw the cook mounting the stairs. “Here comes Mrs. Goodge.”
“Go to Luty’s. Have her and Hatchet drive you to Lowery’s house. When you get there, simply tell him that you went to the Crookshank house to borrow a punch bowl. When you told them about the note, they insisted on driving over to see if the inspector would need a ride back to the house so he could get to the wedding on time.”
Wiggins nodded and was out the front door like a shot. By this time, Mrs. Goodge had made it to the top of the stairs. “Did it work?”
“Yes, he’s on his way there now. But he’s going to stop by the station first and get some constables to go along. Let’s hope they get there in time . . .” She started down the stairs. “Come on, there’s no time to lose. We’ve got to get to Ruth’s. I’ll explain what we’ve got to do on the way over.”
“What are we goin’ there for?” The cook trudged after her.
“We’ve got to call in a few favors from the lads at the police station,” Mrs. Jeffries called over her shoulder. “And we’ll need Ruth’s carriage so we can get to Constable Barnes as quickly as possible.”
Witherspoon and two police constables piled into a four-wheeler that one of the constables flagged down on Holland Park Road.
“Where to, guv?” the driver asked.
“Number three Monmouth Road,” Witherspoon replied. “And get there as quickly as you can. I’ll pay you double if you hurry. It’s a matter of life and death.”
The driver took him at his word, let off the brake, and cracked the whip in the air. The carriage lunged forward, slamming the two policemen against the back of the seat and causing Witherspoon, who was sitting opposite them, to grab the handhold hanging above the window and hang on for dear life.
The four-wheeler raced through the streets of London and got to Bayswater in record time. The three policemen stepped out onto the road, and Witherspoon was paying the driver when they heard a shout come from the house. He charged for the front door with the two constables close on his heels. The door was ajar and they raced inside, coming to a halt just inside the drawing room.
Witherspoon stared at the scene. Christopher Selby, blood running from his mouth, was on the floor slumped against the drapes, and Lowery was on the settee, a look of terror on his face as he stared at the gun that Jeremy Evans had pointed at his head.
Evans looked from Selby to Lowery. “Tell your friend not to be a fool. The next time he comes at me, I’ll not just knock him down, I’ll shoot him.”
Witherspoon’s heart sank. He knew this wasn’t going to end well. “Mr. Evans, please put the gun down. You don’t want to commit murder.”
Evans laughed harshly but didn’t take his gaze off Lowery. “I shouldn’t worry about that if I were you, Inspector. If you’ve done it once, the second time is no effort at all.”
“You’ve killed before?” Witherspoon’s heart sank even further. He was fairly certain he knew what Evans’ answer was going to be, but he neede
d to ask the question in front of witnesses. “May I ask who you murdered?”
“You know that already, Inspector,” he replied. “I’m the one who killed Agatha Moran, and she certainly didn’t deserve to die.” He waved the gun at Lowery. “Her murder was a mistake, but this one won’t be. I won’t hesitate to shoot this scum. He’s killed two innocent women for the basest of reasons: money.”
“That’s a lie.” Lowery dragged his gaze away from the weapon and looked at the inspector. His face was drained of color and his eyes were frantic with fear. “I’ve killed no one. I’m innocent. He’s insane. He’s mad. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
“You’ve murdered two women and gotten away with it,” Evans charged. “And that’s what you had planned for my daughter, isn’t it? But you’ll not hurt her. You’ll never get your filthy hands on her.”
“Cancel the damned wedding, then,” Lowery cried. “But for God’s sake, don’t kill me.”
“You know my wife wouldn’t stand for that, and she’d die before she’d cancel the wedding.” Evans shrugged. “She wouldn’t give a toss if you’d killed ten wives. As long as you’re a ‘Sir’ you’d be acceptable to her, and I can’t take that risk. That’s why you’ve got to die.”
Lowery’s eyes filled with tears. “Don’t just stand there.” He looked at Witherspoon. “Do something. You’re the police. You can’t just let him murder me.”
The constables started to move forward, but the inspector stopped them with a raised hand. A frontal assault would mean immediate death for Lowery. He’d try reason first.
“Mr. Evans, I’m sure you think you’re justified in what you’re doing,” Witherspoon said, “but if this man has committed murder, you must let the law deal with him. He must stand trial. You’ve no right to be judge, jury, and executioner.”
Prime Crime Holiday Bundle Page 78
