A Scandal in Scarlet

by Vicki Delany

  “I suggest you cancel your dinner plans,” I said. “We might be here for a while.”

  Jock O’Callaghan gave me a look that told me his opinion of my suggestion and went to join his mother at their table.

  Ashleigh stood on the Emporium side of the glass doors, peering in, a small crowd behind her. Moriarty had his nose pressed up to the glass. I gave Ashleigh a rueful shrug and mouthed, “Sorry.”

  I turned back to the tearoom. Grant was standing by the door, talking to Officer Johnson. Donald remained in his chair. He’d pulled a book out of his satchel and was reading The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz. I’d recently managed to convince Donald that not all the pastiche works made a mockery of the Great Detective, and I felt a small frisson of pleasure as I watched him read.

  The mayor had sought some privacy and had gone to a corner, standing with her face almost pressed into the wall while she talked on her cell phone. Maureen had cornered the owner of Fun and Frolic, a dress shop on Baker Street, and was waving her finger in the woman’s face. The woman looked like she was considering biting the offending appendage off.

  Jayne and her mother stood close together against the windows. I could tell by the look on Leslie’s face that Jayne had given her the news. Jayne helped her mum sit on the bench in the alcove and then came to join me. “Dead?” She kept her voice low.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Murder?”

  “Unquestionably.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “We wait for the police to tell us we can leave, like everyone else.”

  “Do you have any guesses as to what might have happened?” Jayne asked.

  I gave her a look. “I do not guess, Jayne. You know that. To guess would mean to theorize in advance of the facts. That would be a capital mistake.”

  “Oh, right. Didn’t Sherlock Holmes say that?”

  “Whether he did or not, Gemma Doyle is saying it now.”

  “It’s none of your business!” a woman yelled.

  I glanced over to see the man who’d been pointed out to me as Kathy Lamb’s ex-husband rising to his feet. He plucked his new wife’s hand off his arm. “Of course it’s my business, Elizabeth. Let go of me.” His face was pale, his expression stricken. He walked up to Jayne and me. “You found her, they say. Is she okay? My—I mean Kathy. The doctor and the paramedics have been in there for a long time. That’s good, right? Means it’s not an emergency, right?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Lamb,” I lied. “All we can do is wait.”

  “Why can’t we leave?” Jock O’Callaghan demanded of Officer Johnson. “If there’s not going to be an auction, I have better things to do.”

  “Please sit down, sir,” she said.

  “I’ll be speaking to the chief of police about this,” he said. He turned sharply, and his eyes fell on the second Mrs. Lamb. His face stiffened and he said, “Elizabeth,” in a tone full of ice.

  “Jock,” she replied, with no greater degree of warmth.

  “Still out of jail, I see,” he said.

  “Still pretending to be a big man around town, I see,” she replied. “I notice your wife didn’t come with you today. Showing the handsome young crewman you hired for the summer all the ropes, is she?”

  “One of these days, Elizabeth,” he said, “you’ll get what’s coming to you.”

  “One of these days, Jock,” she replied, “you’ll be dead.”

  He shoved his way past a group of onlookers who were not even pretending not to be listening, and returned to his seat.

  “Was that Elizabeth Dumont?” his mother asked. “She’s aged a great deal since I saw her last. What did she say? I couldn’t hear.”

  “Never mind, Mother.” Jock pulled out his phone.

  “I’ll make more tea,” Jayne said. “I’m sure we can all do with a cup. Fiona, give me a hand.”

  “Can I take a peek at The Valley of Fear, Gemma?” Donald looked up from his book as I passed.

  “I don’t think this is a good time, Donald.”

  “I’d love to bid on it. I came hoping I’d get a bargain.” He sighed heavily. “But the opening bid itself is too rich for my blood. And even if I could offer that, Grant tells me he has a buyer in mind, so he’ll outbid me.”

  “The auction probably isn’t going to go ahead today,” I said, “so I’ll be taking it home. Why don’t you come to the house for tea one day when Uncle Arthur’s back in town? He’ll show it to you then.”

  Donald beamed. “That would be marvelous, Gemma. In the meantime, as long as we’re stuck here for a while, I’ll say hello to Jock and Mrs. O’Callaghan.” He slipped a bookmark into the book before closing it, and then got to his feet.

  “You know them?” I asked.

  “Oh yes. I’m a member of the West London Yacht Club. Have been for many years.”

  Not a lot of things surprise me, but that one had my jaw hitting the floor. A more unnautical person than Donald Morris, I had rarely come across. “You are?” I said to his retreating back. Jock saw him coming, put his phone away, and stood up. The men shook hands, and Donald bent to speak to Mrs. O’Callaghan.

  Grant was keeping Officer Johnson company as she let emergency personnel in and out, but no one else. I went to find out what was going on.

  “Gemma,” she said.

  “Stella. How’s your grandmother?”

  “Doing well, thank you. What’s happening back there?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “I was told to keep everyone here, that’s all.” She spoke softly. “People are saying heart attack, but it sounds like more than that to me.”

  Once again, I lowered my voice. “Everyone dies of heart failure eventually. It’s what causes the heart to fail that’s the issue.”

  “You mean someone caused this,” Grant said.

  I nodded.

  The radio at Stella Johnson’s shoulder crackled. I strained to hear around the static and the noise of voices, both curious and indignant, behind me. Johnson bent her head closer. I did the same. She gave me a glare and half-turned away.

  Conversation over, she pivoted back to face us. “The detectives have arrived. They’ll want to have a quick look at the scene and then talk to everyone. You first, Gemma.”

  “I’ll be in the kitchen,” I said. I didn’t run, but I might have walked very quickly across the room.

  And there I was, helping Jayne boil water, when Ryan and Estrada marched in, and Estrada implied it was all my fault.

  “Kathy Lamb went into the storage room shortly before the tea was served,” I explained in answer to Ryan’s question. “She was expected to join us, but she didn’t show up. When the tea finished, people were getting restless, so I went to get her. Jayne came with me, and we found her on the floor.”

  “If she didn’t join you for tea, does that mean she was dead before it began?” Ryan asked.

  “Not necessarily. I didn’t know her,” I said, “so I can’t say for sure, but people said she was upset about something and wanted time in here alone before the auction began.”

  “What upset her?”

  “I doubt it has anything to do with her death.”

  “Why don’t you let us be the judge of that, Gemma,” Estrada said.

  “She had a minor disagreement with Maureen Macgregor shortly before we all sat down to tea.”

  “She of the purloined planters,” Ryan said.

  “The very one. Maureen’s contribution to the auction was, in Kathy’s opinion, too little and too late.”

  “But she agreed to include it,” Jayne said. Fiona had been sent out of the kitchen while the detectives interviewed Jayne and me. I leaned against the counter, speaking calmly. Jayne fussed about with teapots, milk, and sugar. All the good china cups were dirty or stacked in the dishwasher, so she’d put a pile of takeout cups onto a tray.

  “Did anyone go into the storage room after Kathy sought this time alone?” Estrada asked.

  “Someone clearly did.
The person who killed her. Other than that, I can’t say. I was in the tearoom, at a table for eight, seated between Jayne and Leslie Wilson. My chair faced toward the windows, not the back of the building. You know the layout of this place, Detective. A corridor leads out of the dining room. The two restrooms are on one side, and the kitchen on the other. The storage room’s at the end of the hall, and the door to the alley is accessible through there. People were getting up and moving about all the time, going to the loo, greeting friends, particularly after tea finished and we were waiting for the auction to start.”

  “The door leading to the alley is unlocked,” Ryan said.

  “I wondered if you’d noticed that,” I said.

  “This isn’t a game, Gemma,” Estrada snapped. “If you know something, tell us. Don’t wait for us to tease it out as though we’re on a fishing expedition here.”

  I had to admit that for once she was right and I was wrong. “Sorry,” I said. “Leslie Wilson was in the back room most of the afternoon, accepting and cataloguing auction donations as they came in. Both doors, leading to the outside and to the rest of the building, were unlocked at 4:20 when I brought in the basket of goods from the shop that is my contribution and the book that’s Uncle Arthur’s. I left almost immediately and didn’t go back there until Jayne and I went in search of Kathy at 5:37. You can ask Leslie if she remembers if she locked the door when she finished. I should point out that all ninety-one auction items remain in situ.”

  “How do you know that?” Estrada asked.

  “Because I saw them, and I compared the items in the room to the auction list. No noticeable gaps are in the inventory. The small, portable, expensive items—the diamond necklace being offered at fifteen thousand, the rare book at twelve thousand—are still there, as is the Wendy Lomax painting at seven thousand.”

  “You told us you only popped into the storage room. You expect me to believe you memorized the value of ninety items and could tell in a matter of minutes if anything was missing?”

  I hate having to explain my thought process to the police. “I expect you to believe it, Detective Estrada, because that is what happened.”

  “I saw Gemma reading the auction booklet while we were having our tea,” Jayne said. “She’s good at remembering details.”

  I smiled at the detectives. “All of which is irrelevant. If nothing was taken, then theft cannot have been the motive. It’s possible our culprit lifted one of the envelopes containing gift cards; I didn’t check them all. What reason anyone might want to do so would be highly significant, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “We’ll have everything compared to the lists,” Ryan said, “but theft can’t be dismissed outright as a motive. It’s possible the door was left unlocked, and Kathy surprised the thief, and he, or she, lashed out.”

  “True,” I said.

  “Tea, Detectives?” Jayne said.

  “No thank you,” Ryan said.

  “Can I take the tray out?” she asked.

  “Go ahead,” Estrada said.

  “Everyone’s going to ask me what’s going on.”

  “To which you will not reply, will you, Ms. Wilson?” Estrada said.

  “No.” Jayne left with her laden tray. A wave of voices hit us as the doors swung open.

  “Mrs. Lamb appears to have been strangled,” Ryan said. “Marks are clear on her throat, and a length of pink rope was on the floor beside her. There are a lot of miniature, decorated teacups on the floor. Some are broken.”

  “I cut the rope away,” I said. “In case she was still alive. She wasn’t. The little teacups were strung together on the rope to make a decoration. We hung two of them in the hallway earlier, next to the other things we have for sale.”

  “Only one rope’s there now,” Ryan said. “I noticed them when we came in.”

  I nodded.

  “Okay, Gemma, thanks. I—we have your number if we need anything more.” He looked at Estrada. “Check with the forensics people, and see if they can tell us anything yet. Then we’ll need to get the name and number of everyone out there. Ask if they saw anything significant. If they did, ask them to stay. If not, tell them we’ll be in touch later for statements, and then they can go. I’ll be out in a minute to make an announcement.”

  “Right.” She gave me her standard look of disapproval and left the kitchen. It was no secret that Louise Estrada didn’t like me, and she didn’t trust me. Mistrust, I’m used to. I can’t help it if people don’t always understand my thought process. But open dislike? Irene Talbot, who as a reporter for the West London Star knows more about what goes on at the West London Police Station than the chief does, tells me it’s personal. Louise wanted the job of lead detective, but Ryan Ashburton came back to West London and got it. She thinks he came back to be with me, which he didn’t.

  That Ryan and I are, once again, an item, no matter how tenuous and hesitant of an item we might be, no doubt reinforces Louise’s feelings about me.

  I try to remind myself that she’s a good police officer. She might not like me, but she knows when I’m right and acts accordingly.

  Ryan studied my face. I gave him a smile.

  “I wish this hadn’t happened to you again,” he said.

  “It didn’t happen to me, or to Jayne,” I said. “It happened to Kathy Lamb.”

  We walked out of the kitchen together.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said in a good loud voice, “Can I have your attention, please?” Everyone stopped talking mid-sentence and turned to face him. Ryan never beat about the bush. “I’m sorry, but Kathy Lamb has died.”

  People gasped. A couple of women sat down quickly. One slumped in her chair. A man said, “Surely you’re kidding.”

  Ryan didn’t dignify that comment with a reply.

  “That can’t be right.” Mr. Lamb pushed himself forward. “You’re wrong. She has a bad heart. Get her to the hospital.”

  “Sit down, Dan,” Elizabeth, his wife, called.

  “Can I have your name, please?” Ryan asked.

  “I’m Daniel Lamb. I’m Kathy’s husband.”

  “Ex-husband,” Elizabeth yelled.

  Ryan’s right eyebrow rose. “Do you know anything about what happened, sir?”

  “Why aren’t the medics rushing her out of here? Why won’t you let me be with her? Will someone tell me what’s going on?” Daniel Lamb glanced around the room. Sympathetic faces looked back. He let out a moan, and his shoulders slumped.

  “I’m sorry,” Ryan said again, “but we were too late.”

  Mr. Lamb shook his head. Leslie Wilson took his arm and gently guided him back to his chair. He’d aged about ten years in the last minute. Grief does that to a person. Notably, his new wife, Elizabeth, sat stiffly in her own seat and made no move to comfort him.

  “Are you and Kathy Lamb divorced?” Ryan asked.

  “Of course, they’re divorced,” Elizabeth said. “Dan’s not a bigamist.”

  “What’s your name?” Ryan said.

  “Elizabeth Dumont. I chose not to change my name when Dan and I married. That happened only six months ago.”

  “What brings you and Ms. Dumont here today, Mr. Lamb?”

  “We—” Elizabeth began.

  Ryan cut her off. “Allow Mr. Lamb to answer the question, please.”

  “Kathy and I are divorced, as Elizabeth said. We came for the auction. I … we … Elizabeth and I want to support the museum. The museum means … meant a lot to Kathy. Was it her heart? She gave up smoking ten years ago, but before that she smoked a pack a day since she was a kid. It takes its toll, isn’t that what they say?”

  Elizabeth stared at him in something approaching fury, whether because he was talking so sadly of his ex-wife or at the comment about smokers, I didn’t know. The overpowering odor of tobacco hung over her like a cloud.

  “This was almost certainly murder,” Ryan said.

  The word ran through the room. I stood behind Ryan and slightly to his right. I watched ever
yone. Eyes opened wide, mouths gasped, legs wobbled.

  Jock O’Callaghan got to his feet. “Murder, you say, Detective. What a coincidence that we have the Black Widow herself here with us today.”

  I didn’t know what that meant, but I didn’t have any trouble figuring it out. Elizabeth Dumont’s face tightened even further. “You repeat that slander again, Jock, and I’ll see you in court.”

  “I don’t believe I mentioned any names, Elizabeth. What might make you think I was talking about you?”

  She bristled but didn’t answer.

  “Is my presence necessary here, Detective?” Jock said. “I have an important … I mean”—he gestured to the elderly woman with him—“my mother needs to rest.”

  “I’m perfectly fine,” she said, her voice calm and in control. “Continue, Detective.”

  Estrada came silently down the hall. She stood beside me, arms crossed over her chest.

  “I’ll need to speak to you in turn, sir,” Ryan said. “If anyone saw someone in the back room with Kathy Lamb after the tea began, or if you have anything else you think significant, anything at all, please let me or Detective Estrada here know. Otherwise, Officer Johnson will take your names and phone numbers, and we will be in touch for your statements later.”

  People immediately fell into three groups. Some rushed for the detectives, shouting information and demanding answers. Some bolted for the door, wanting to get the heck out of here. A few remained in their seats, calmly sipping the last of the tea and waiting for the rush to be over. Ryan and Estrada would have their work cut out for them, trying to determine what was significant as opposed to what people wanted to seem significant because it might contribute to their own sense of self-importance.

  The mayor, who’d been standing close to Stella Johnson, no doubt awaiting her chance to bolt, handed the officer her card. Johnson nodded and held the door open. Jock O’Callaghan was delayed in his escape by having to fish his mother’s cane out from under the chair where it had fallen. She didn’t appear to be in any rush to leave.