by Shéa MacLeod
He gave me a funny look. “No. It was a full sheet. I explained everything. That after I helped Mrs. Fairfax, I’d found myself in trouble and had skimmed more than she asked. That I felt guilty about it. That I was sorry.”
“That you couldn’t go on working at the club, pretending everything was aces.”
“Well, yes. Something to that effect.”
I leaned forward. “Do you remember exactly what that line said?”
“I believe it was ‘I can’t go on like this, but I am too much a coward to face the music.’” He flushed crimson. “Then I said I was sorry and signed it. I planned to leave it in her office.”
Instead, someone had taken it and ripped out one single line, adding a period to the end to make it look as if he’d tried to kill himself. Obviously, the killer had planned to pin everything on Bamber: Not just the theft of the jazz club’s money, but the murder of Alfred Musgrave.
“What did you know about Musgrave’s murder?” I asked. “Quickly. It may save your life.”
His eyes widened with fright. “I don’t know anything.”
“Don’t lie to me, Mr. Bamber. You must know something, or the killer wouldn’t be after you.”
He clutched at the blanket, knuckles white and hands shaking. “It was the room. You see, I found Musgrave first. He was already dead, but the room wasn’t messed up. Not like it was later. And the pocket watch was in his pocket. I’m certain of it.”
Which confirmed my suspicion that the scene had been deliberately set. “What time was that?”
“Five minutes past one. I was scared the killer would come back. So I ran.”
Heavy footsteps echoed in the hall. The policeman was returning. Aunt Butty popped her head through the doorway, hat slightly askew, and beckoned me frantically.
I stood quickly. “Thank you Mr. Bamber. You’ve been most helpful.”
“I have?”
I gave him an enigmatic smile and hurried from the room after my aunt. Behind me came the shout of the policeman. I lifted my skirt and ran for the stairwell.
Aunt Butty was a few feet ahead of me, already halfway down the staircase. The heavy thump of police boots sounded from behind as we hit the first landing and continued on our way. I was worried about my aunt as she was huffing and puffing and swearing like a longshoreman.
Finally, we made the ground floor. Unfortunately, our pursuer was so close I could have sworn I could feel his breath on the back of my neck. Hiding seemed like a good idea.
“In here!” I grabbed Aunt Butty’s hand and dragged her into the first room with an open door. It was a rather spartan office with only a simple desk, a chair, and a single case of books against one wall. The only place to hide was behind the curtains gracing the window which overlooked the front lawn.
I grabbed one half and jerked it closed and we slipped behind it. Just in time, too. A floorboard in the hall creaked as the policeman paced up and down, searching for his prey. I turned and eyed the window. It was the only way out. The drop to the lawn didn’t look too bad. If I could slide it open, we could lower ourselves out and get away with no one the wiser.
The window slid up easily and quietly enough. I stuck my head out. Four or five feet with a small bush to break our fall. I could go first, and then catch my aunt. I signalled Aunt Butty, pointing to the open window, miming that we should use it to escape.
Just then, the heavy tread of the policeman indicated he’d entered the room. My motions became more frantic. Butty shook her head vigorously. So vigorously that one of the wax grapes dislodged from her hat and hit the floor with a soft plop. We both stared in horror as it rolled beneath the curtain and out into the room.
“Ah ha!” the policeman boomed.
“Go! Go!” I practically shoved Aunt Butty out the window. She hit the ground, tangled in the bush. I managed to jump out, barely missing her. I hit the grass, the ground beneath still soft from the morning rain. Jumping to my feet, I glanced up at the window to find a red-faced copper staring back at me.
I grabbed Aunt Butty beneath the armpits, heaved her from the bush, and gave her a shove toward the car park. She charged across the lawn, grapes quivering. I noticed a few extra twigs now graced her hat as I ran after her, ignoring the splatters of mud which now decorated the front of my dress.
Shouts echoed behind us as we hit the graveled parking area. We hopped in the car and sped away, spraying rocks everywhere. Just like the movies.
I careened around a corner on two wheels and nearly took out a milk truck. Aunt Butty gripped the door handle with one hand while holding onto her hat for dear life with the other. We hit the main road and I breathed a sigh of relief. “That was a close one.”
“They would have thrown us in prison for sure!” Aunt Butty declared.
I seriously doubted that, but I left her to her wild imaginings and focused on the road. Fortunately, there wasn’t much traffic, which meant we sailed along at a good pace.
Aunt Butty glanced behind us and let out a gasp. “I think someone’s following us!”
I craned my neck. Sure enough, a car barreled along the road behind us. A very familiar Morris Minor. My heart kicked into high gear, pounding so hard I saw spots dancing in front of my eyes.
I pressed down on the accelerator and the Roadster sped up a little. We roared past genteel houses with white pillars and neat porticos. Nannies walking their charges in prams paused to stare. A small dog on a leash yipped at us, his owner chiding him. A uniformed beat copper shouted and blew his whistle. We ignored him and carried on.
Behind us, the Morris Minor crept closer. Not close enough I could see the driver’s face, but enough I could make out a few details of his clothing. He wore a distinctive yellow and green tweed fedora hat. It was Leo Fairfax, the same man who’d run over Alfred Musgrave. I was sure of it! I had a bad, bad feeling. Was he trying to kill us to prevent us revealing the truth about Bamber? Or perhaps because I witnessed what I now realized was no accident, but the attempted murder of Alfred Musgrave?
Pressing harder on the accelerator, the Roadster leapt forward. I whipped around another corner with a screech of tires. Aunt Butty let out a shriek and clasped her bosom. I swerved around another vehicle going much too slow, nearly plowing into a rag and bone cart clopping the other direction. I veered back into my lane just in time to avoid a head-on collision.
“We’re going to die!” Aunt Butty wailed.
“Nonsense,” I snapped. “Stiffen your spine, Aunt!”
A quick glance in the rearview mirror revealed the Minor hadn’t rounded the corner yet. Now would be a good time to hide. But how to hide a car like mine?
Up ahead, I saw a narrow alley. Hoping it was wide enough, I whipped into it, and slammed on the breaks. Aunt Butty was nearly unseated, but managed to catch herself in time.
“Have we lost him?”
I glanced back. “You better pray we have.”
“Or else?”
My tone was grim. “Or else we may be dead women.”
Chapter 16
We both watched out the back window. I don’t know about Aunt Butty, but my heart felt like it was lodged somewhere in the middle of my throat. After what seemed an age, the Morris Minor sailed by. Was it me? Or was he going slowly, as if looking for something?
“We lost him!” Aunt Butty crowed.
“For now.” I waited a few moments, then cautiously backed out of the alley. The Minor was nowhere to be seen and we both breathed out shaky sighs of relief.
A quarter of an hour later found us ensconced at a cozy table at Claridge’s with their largest pot of tea and a tier of finger sandwiches and pastries that would make the Queen herself weep with envy. We ignored the grand arches and elegantly coffered ceiling, intent on restoring ourselves after our adventure.
“What a close call. Almost getting murdered really takes it out of a person.” Aunt Butty selected an egg and cress.
My heart rate was returning to normal and now I wasn’t so sure we’d
been nearly murdered. Perhaps I had overreacted slightly. Then again, the driver of the Morris Minor had been following us and I was sure he was the one who’d tried to run down Musgrave. So, maybe she wasn’t just being dramatic.
“I, for one, am famished.” She took a bite of her egg and cress. “Scrumptious. They do know their way around a tea sandwich.”
“That’s because you dragged us off before we had luncheon.” I went straight for the raisin scones. Piling one high with clotted cream shipped over from Devon and fresh berry jam no doubt whipped up in the hotel’s kitchen. It was marvelous.
“More important things to do. Who do you think that was chasing us? And why?”
I had a suspicion about the identity of the driver, but I kept it to myself. For now. “Maybe they didn’t want us sharing what we learned at the hospital today.”
“What did you learn from our mark?”
Aunt Butty had been at the pictures again. I managed to avoid an eye roll, but only just. I gave her a quick rundown of everything Mr. Bamber had told me.
“How fascinating,” she said. “It gets more interesting all the time. Who do you suppose killed Alfred Musgrave?”
I gave her a blank stare. Her eyes narrowed.
“You have an idea, don’t you?”
“Perhaps. But it needs some fleshing out. I’ll have to ponder on it a bit more.”
She gave me a sly look. “Playing it rather close to the vest, are we?”
I shrugged and popped another bite of scone in my mouth, wondering vaguely if I could steal the chef away. They really were the most marvelous scones.
She smiled proudly. “You remind me of myself sometimes.”
I considered that a compliment. “Is that why you saved me?”
She snorted. “You make it sound so dramatic.”
“It was, rather.”
“You were sixteen. Everything is dramatic at sixteen.”
“True,” I admitted. “But my father did lock me in my room.”
“My brother-in-law is a horse’s derrière.”
I barely refrained from snorting tea up my nose. “That’s one way of putting it, darling.”
“It’s the only way of putting it,” she said, liberating a rather scrummy looking raspberry tart from the blue and white china tier.
At age sixteen, I’d fallen wildly in love with a local farmhand. As you do when you’re young and full of nonsense. It was ridiculously inappropriate, and I was dead certain it was forever and ever amen. My father, being the sympathetic type, locked me in my room with nothing but bread and water until I came to my senses. Possibly the first time in his life he got truly riled by something other than the arrival of the Patels. Goodness knows what it all would have come to if my mother hadn’t put her foot down and rung my aunt. Aunt Butty had come flying in like a feather-festooned whirlwind and whisked me away to her townhouse in London.
“I could not allow you to molder away in that ghastly place,” she said firmly. “It just was not on.”
By “ghastly place” she meant Chipping Poggs—where I no doubt would have ended up an old maid still locked in my father’s proverbial dungeon.
“Well, I don’t think I’ve ever properly thanked you for it. So... thank you.”
“Pish posh. It’s what aunties do. Have a Victoria sponge. They’re divine.”
I LEFT AUNT BUTTY ON her doorstep, minus a grape or two, and motored off toward home. Once inside, I kicked off my shoes, changed into a clean frock, rang for tea, and sank down on the sofa with a sigh of relief. I was half way through my second cup of Darjeeling when Chaz rang up.
“Darling, why don’t you join me tonight at the jazz club?”
“Sounds lovely, Chaz, darling, but I feel the need of a night to myself.”
“You’ve had a year of nights to yourself,” he pouted.
“True. But this is for a good cause. I’ve nearly cracked the case.”
“You know who murdered that ghastly Musgrave?”
“I might. But I need to have a think.”
“Understood.” He sighed heavily. “I’ll have to find someone to take pity on me.”
“I’m certain you’ll find someone.” The telephone wasn’t the best way to convey my concern, but it needed to be done, albeit carefully. One never knows who is listening in. “But Chaz, perhaps you should skip the Astoria tonight. Go somewhere else.”
“Go where, old thing? The Astoria is the most smashing thing happening right now.”
“It’s just... I talked to Hale. The, um, pianist.”
“Oh, did you?” His voice was light and teasing.
How to say it without revealing too much. “He said a certain gentleman is using it to...”
“To what? Spill it, Ophelia.”
“Deal in a certain substance. One with which you are intimately familiar.” I winced. I hadn’t meant to be so blunt.
“And you think I can’t control myself?”
Oh, dear. He was angry. “No. I don’t think that at all and you know it. What I do think is that it isn’t worth putting yourself in the way of danger.”
“You’re one to talk.”
“I’m trying to solve a mu—” Listening ears, I reminded myself. No need to give the telephone operator extra material for gossip. “I’m trying to assist North.”
Chaz snorted. “Very well. If it will make you feel better, I’ll go to my club tonight. Satisfied?”
Relief flooded me. “Very.”
After he rang off, I padded over to the desk and took a notebook and pen from the drawer. Returning to my perch, I began taking notes in between sips of tea.
First, I wrote Musgrave’s name in the middle of the paper with a circle around it. Then from the circle I drew lines poking out like spokes on a wheel. At the end of each spoke went the name of a suspect and his or her motive for murdering Musgrave. Frankly, it didn’t get me far. I had no new information.
Bamber’s comment about the state of the office when he first found Musgrave dead played over and over in my mind. If he told the truth and the office had been unmussed, the watch unbroken, then the killer must have returned and set up the room to look like a fight had taken place and the watch smashed during the fight. But why?
Because the watch needed to be smashed. It was the only way to ensure the police knew the exact time of death. And the only reason that would be important was that somehow the killer had an alibi for the specific time of twenty minutes past one.
Which, of course, meant that Musgrave likely hadn’t been killed at 01:20 at all. No, if Bamber was telling the truth about finding the body at five minutes past, Musgrave had been killed earlier and the watch changed to match the time the killer needed. Frankly, I believed Bamber. He had nothing left to lose.
Right. I tore off my page of suspects, revealing a clean one. I drew a long line across the center of the page horizontally. Then I drew a shorter line vertically part way across and above it wrote:
12:50 – Alfred arrives for audit.
01:00 – Mabel hears a cough.
01:05 - Bamber finds Body. Office Unmussed. Watch fine.
Further along I drew another vertical line and marked it 01:20 along with the notation that the watch indicated this was when the murder happened and that was when I’d heard what I could only assume was the gunshot. I continued on with my time scale, including everyone’s whereabouts and when each thing had supposedly taken place, finishing up with Helena finding the body at 01:30.
Finally, I stared at the timescale for a good long time. Slowly, an idea began to coalesce in my mind.
First, I needed to talk to Mabel again. Then I needed Detective Inspector North’s assistance, but I had no doubt he’d hang up on me. Or arrest me.
I reached for the phone and dialed Varant. His butler picked up on the third ring. It seemed ages before Varant himself came to the phone.
“Hello?” His voice sounded tinny, but oddly reassuring.
“I need your help.”
Chapter 17
It had taken some convincing on Varant’s part, but Detective Inspector North soon gathered together all the players at the club. I was dying for a highball, but as it was before hours, there was no one to mix one up except for Helena, who was rather busy at the moment. And while I may be one to ignore the niceties, there were police officers present who might frown on me helping myself.
Then again, maybe they wouldn’t care. I toyed with the idea a bit longer, giving it up eventually. I needed to keep my head.
Chaz and Varant lounged at the bar, seeing as how they were barely peripherals in the investigation. Chaz was the only one who’d been there during the murder, and he had a rock-solid alibi, having been with me at the time. Not to mention he’d had no reason to kill Musgrave. Especially since Musgrave had been wanting to kick out Leo and his opium dealing.
All the singers and musicians—except for Hale Davis—gathered around one of the larger tables, huddling together as if for support. Helena sat alone at a smaller table, smoking a cigarette. Her husband sat at a table nearby looking hungover.
Doctor Eliot and Aunt Butty—dark eyes bright with curiosity—sat at one of the booths. John Bamber, fresh from the hospital and looking like a wilted daisy, sat with them.
I’d told my aunt she didn’t need to come, but she’d donned a tulle smothered hat of a peculiar shade of eye-searing blue and insisted. “I’ve come this far. I’m not about to back down now!”
Hale sat on the steps leading to the stage, elbows braced on knees and hands clasped together. He was deceptively calm, but the heat in his eyes when he looked at me made me feel thick and fumbly. So I did what any sane woman would do in my situation. I ignored him.
Mabel stood in the corner near the backstage exit shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot. She’d removed her apron in deference to the situation, but still wore the colorful kerchief on her head.
“Ladies and gentlemen, if you please.” North’s booming voice cut through the low hum of voices. Everyone quieted and turned expectant eyes to the policeman. “I’ve gathered you together today to go over a few final things.”
