The Fossil Murder

by Evelyn James

“Thanks,” Tommy huffed.

  “What does Clara say?”

  “What do you think?”

  O’Harris smirked, he knew Clara well enough to know how she would have reacted.

  “All right, so it’s a bit of a muddle, but all you have to do is avoid the woman and everything will calm down,” he said.

  Tommy shook his head.

  “I have this terrible feeling it won’t be that simple. Miss Holbein is used to getting what she wants. Why do you think I fled here today? I feared she might actually turn up at the house and drag me from it, she has clearly discovered the address. Annie has promised to tell her I don’t live there if that happens to be the case,” Tommy raised his eyebrows. “I was hoping for a little sympathy too.”

  “And you have it,” O’Harris swore. “I’ll do better than sympathy even, I’ll help you solve this puzzle.”

  “Solve it?” Tommy looked confused. “I thought I was just going to avoid Miss Holbein?”

  “Well, if you are right and she is utterly determined to make you her lover, then we need to put the stoppers on her passion at once.”

  “How?” Tommy looked miserable. “I thought about making myself utterly repugnant to her, but she seems to like the way I repulse her.”

  “The complexity of the female condition, old man. They want what they can’t have. Dare say we are all a bit like that, but Miss Holbein is an extreme version. What we have to do is convince her she doesn’t want you, because she wants someone else more.”

  “Now I am baffled,” Tommy slumped his shoulders, feeling a little hopeless. “You are suggesting we need to find another man for Miss Holbein?”

  “There is already one available. Victor Darling.”

  “She says she is bored with him,” Tommy said.

  “She is bored with the old Victor,” O’Harris clarified. “What we need to do is convince her that Victor is something more than he appears.”

  “If you ask me, Victor looks keen to abandon his quest to be a kept husband and go back to tinkering with cars, and I can’t blame him. Surely we are casting him into the lion’s den?”

  “We aren’t making him marry her, just distract her until her infatuation with you wears off, and it will wear off,” O’Harris grinned. “She is that sort. Always looking for the next thing, something different and novel. I doubt she’ll marry Victor either. She’ll get bored and he will have a lucky escape. But for the time being you and Victor have mutually compatible goals – you want to be rid of Miss Holbein and he wants her to like him.”

  Tommy thought about this for a while.

  “Do you think Victor will play along?”

  “I think if we make it plain this will keep him in Miss Holbein’s favour, he will.”

  Tommy scrunched up his face.

  “Isn’t it a little deceitful? Aren’t we being unfair to Miss Holbein?”

  “She is toying with you both,” O’Harris said bluntly. “She is surprisingly cynical for a young woman. She knows what Victor is and what he wants, which is why she is so cruel to him. She wants to see how far she can push him. It’s a power game and don’t think she is not enjoying every minute of it, for the second she is bored, Victor will be an outcast. Then there is you, she can’t buy you with her money, which makes you incredibly enticing, yet she refuses to believe you wish to have nothing to do with her. She will do all she can to claim you, have no fear of that. I think she is callous and dangerous, that one. You don’t need to feel bad for escaping her clutches.”

  Tommy took a deep breath. He felt a little better talking with O’Harris and having his problem analysed from a neutral perspective.

  “Do we need Victor in on this?” He said.

  “He has got to know the details, I think, if we want his help,” O’Harris glanced at his watch. “He said he was going to stop by Miss Holbein’s in the morning and see if she wanted a day out. By now he has probably already been rejected. Miss Holbein will be confidently assuming you will respond to her summons.”

  Tommy cringed.

  “I’ll have a message sent to Victor and ask him to come over. Then we can plot together,” O’Harris slapped Tommy on the back. “Just one day working for Clara and you are already in trouble. She’ll never let you hear the end of this.”

  “Thanks very much,” Tommy said without humour.

  ~~~*~~~

  Clara decided she needed to investigate the The League for Christians Against Evolution. She had kept the leaflet she had been handed the other day by the protestors outside the town hall and after scouring its text, she had found that it was printed for the league and even sported the local address for the organisation. There was a short paragraph about supporting the campaign with financial donations and where they could be sent to, along with the location of the league’s weekly meetings. Clara noted that they met every Wednesday and today was Wednesday, which meant she could invade a meeting and discover if there was any connection between the protestors and the demise of John Morley. She doubted it, somehow, she couldn’t see why an Anti-Darwin protestor would attack the man, but you never knew. Besides, she was not trying to solve the murder, she was supposed to be investigating who was behind the threats on the exhibition for Dr Browning, and that had to be the league.

  Only, Clara had to admit to herself that she was trying to solve the murder. She couldn’t help herself. She knew that was not what Dr Browning was paying her for, but she also felt he would not want to be arrested for the murder of Morley just because no one could locate another suspect. She felt she was doing him an extra service by finding the real killer and, besides, she could not let such a thing alone. Someone had died. Maybe he was not a very nice man, and few would miss him, but that was not the point. Someone had murdered a person and that was a crime. You could not start letting people off the hook for killing people because the man they slaughtered was not very nice. Justice was blind, as they said, to such nuances.

  Clara was just really hoping Harry Beasley was not responsible.

  It took a little walking about to locate the correct building with the potential witness upstairs. The properties looked different from the front, then the back. When Clara was satisfied she had the right building, she entered the shop that filled its bottom floor. This was a ladies’ outfitters, one of the better-quality stores in the town. Clara had bought a couple of dresses from the place in the past, but the prices made her think twice before shopping there regularly. As she arrived, she spotted a pale green number in the window, with a pattern of sequins running up the side, and it almost distracted her from her mission.

  “May I help?”

  Clara glanced up at the woman stood behind the shop counter. Miss Clarence was worryingly thin and extremely carefully turned out. Her jewellery was not elaborate, but it perfectly complimented her dress, and her hair was pristinely swept up into a bun, with so many pins and hair lacquer that not a strand dared fall out of place. She was almost like one of the mannequins she used in her shop to display her wares. Clara always felt hopelessly plump and unfashionable near Miss Clarence, and she had to admit that was another reason she did not come to this shop very often.

  “Good morning, I have an odd question, but I am wondering who resides in the flat in the top storey of this building?” Clara came to the counter.

  “Are you buying a dress?” Miss Clarence asked coldly, her head tilting up a fraction so she looked down her nose at Clara.

  Clara licked her lips.

  “I like the green one,” she said, deciding not to test Miss Clarence’s patience. The woman was single-minded when it came to sales, nothing else interested her. “I suppose, after I have dealt with my investigations, I might try it on?”

  Miss Clarence did not look impressed.

  “Oh yes, you are that detective. Didn’t I sell you a dress just before New Year’s?”

  “You did,” Clara said. “It was very nice.”

  “I wouldn’t have let you leave if it was not. I only sell people clo
thes that suit them and that they look good in. That green dress, for instance, will not suit you at all. It is cut far too straight.”

  Clara was not sure whether to be hurt as well as disappointed.

  “However, there is a lovely peacock blue dress that is ideal for your shape. It will be extremely flattering on you.”

  “Does it have sequins?” Clara asked.

  “It does,” Miss Clarence managed a slight smile. “And, once you have decided upon it, we can have my niece make any necessary adjustments. She lives in the flat on the top floor.”

  Clara saw the way things were going and decided not to fight Miss Clarence. She wasn’t getting past her without buying a dress, that was for sure.

  Miss Clarence produced the peacock blue dress, which Clara had to admit was rather lovely. It had a cinched waist which Miss Clarence insisted would suit Clara far more than the straight lines of the green gown. After trying it on, Clara found she was agreeing with the keen eye of the woman. The dress did accentuate her curves, without exaggerating them. Clara was impressed, though less so when she saw the price. She found her breath catching at the back of her throat.

  “It will include any alterations,” Miss Clarence said quickly. “Also, there is this rather nice necklace that will go with it perfectly, and I shall include that in the price too.”

  The necklace consisted of blue cut glass meant to look like sapphires on a silver chain. Costume jewellery and not worth a great deal, though it would look nice with the dress. Clara started to work out the cost of it all in her head, asking herself how badly she wanted to speak with Miss Clarence’s niece upstairs. She knew she was going to buy it. She had to.

  “Very well,” she said at last, and then produced her cheque book and tried not to grimace as she wrote out the figure. She hoped Dr Browning was generous with her fee once she had solved the case for him.

  “I shall fetch my niece,” Miss Clarence said. “That hem needs a slight adjustment. I shall ask her to come down.”

  “I would rather go up to her,” Clara quickly said, thinking she would like to see for herself the sort of view Miss Clarence’s niece had of the back of the town hall.

  Miss Clarence looked put out, but Clara had just spent a large sum of money, so she did not argue.

  “You just have to go straight up the stairs and knock on the first door at the very top landing,” Miss Clarence said, a small frown creeping onto her face and causing her to purse her lips. “My niece is always very busy during the day working on alterations, but she will answer the door.”

  Miss Clarence opened the hatch in her shop counter to let Clara through. She watched the detective with clear unease. Clara felt that she had crossed a divide, stepping onto hallowed ground that was the preserve of the shopkeeper and thus should not be soiled by the feet of an ordinary shopper. It was trespass, even if she had been invited (albeit grudgingly) to enter. Clara gave Miss Clarence a polite smile and then headed for a doorway that led to a corridor and a steep staircase. She could feel Miss Clarence’s eyes on her until she was out of sight of the shop floor. It made the skin between her shoulder blades tingle.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The stairs wound their way up to the third floor. The first floor was used for storing bolts of cloth, more versions of the dresses below in different sizes and a range of accessories that could not fit into the cabinets and shelves in the main shop. Clara noted there was a range of winter coats leftover from earlier in the year carefully stored in one corner, as she glanced through an open door. The doors on the second floor were all shut, and Clara guessed Miss Clarence lived in these apartments. The stairs narrowed as they headed to the top floor and the ceiling seemed to drop by a good few inches. This was the garret space, the smallest area of what was not a vast building to begin with. Clara spotted a door, which was the only one leading off the landing and knocked.

  She could hear someone moving about in the room beyond. The floor creaked extremely loudly at the slightest movement. Eventually the door was opened by a young woman wearing a pair of very thick spectacles. She lifted these to get a better look at Clara.

  “Oh!” She said in surprise.

  “Your aunt allowed me up,” Clara explained hastily, shuffling the dress in her arms. “The hem needs altering, but I would also like to ask you a question or two about your view of the town hall.”

  The woman looked perplexed, but she let Clara into her small living space. The garret consisted of a neat living room, including the miniature bay window, with a stove in one corner for warmth and making tea. Through a door at the back of the room Clara could just glimpse a bed and the edge of a washstand. The two-room attic served as workspace and home for the young woman who now uneasily took the dress from Clara.

  “Er, you can sit?” She motioned to an armchair squashed into the bay window. It had been turned so it mostly faced the outside world.

  “The best light,” Clara said as she sat, understanding why the chair had been placed so awkwardly. The unusual bay allowed a large amount of light into this section of the room.

  “Yes, erm…” the woman looked undecided as to how to proceed.

  “Clara Fitzgerald,” Clara introduced herself. “And you are?”

  “Maud Hickson,” the woman said. “Miss Clarence is my mother’s sister.”

  Maud pressed her finger onto one of the sequins on the dress, her eyes focusing on the fabric.

  “I do all the alterations for my aunt’s customers.”

  “And you live up here?”

  “For the time being,” Maud narrowed her eyes and blinked a little as she looked at her surroundings. “Until I get married, or something.”

  Maud unfurled the gown and took a good look at it.

  “What was it? The hem?”

  “Just needed lifting by an inch or so,” Clara agreed.

  Maud laid the dress over a small table and then fetched her sewing kit. She produced a pair of scissors with a fine point and began unplucking the hem of the dress. She was endeavouring to ignore Clara.

  “My real reason for intruding on you,” Clara spoke, “was because I am curious about the view you have of the town hall. I was at the town hall last night and I saw the light on in this room.”

  “I work late a lot,” Maud said without looking up. “Some of the alterations are extensive and I also make custom hats. I spend a lot of time sitting by that window.”

  “And looking out?”

  Maud glanced up, adjusting her glasses on her nose as she did so.

  “What is your point?”

  “A terrible thing happened at the town hall two nights’ ago. A man died. No one knows what really occurred. I was hoping you might have seen something.”

  Maud gave a snort.

  “You bought this dress and made it past my aunt just to ask me that?” She said, amazed. “Well, I am most sorry, but I saw nothing.”

  Clara was disappointed, especially as she had just spent a lot of money to get that answer.

  “You have a very good view of the yard of the town hall,” she sighed, looking out of the window again. “I really hoped you saw something.”

  “Most of the time I am leaning over my work, stitching this or that,” Maud shrugged.

  “You must look up occasionally?”

  “Of course!” Maud paused with her scissors. “But that does not mean…”

  She stopped herself and a look of sudden insight crept onto her face.

  “Two nights’ ago,” she said almost to herself. “That was a full moon, wasn’t it?”

  Clara tried to remember.

  “It might have been.”

  Maud walked to the window and looked out at the world below her.

  “I didn’t think I had seen anything, because I barely registered what I was looking at, at the time. I am usually so caught up in my work,” Maud leaned into the bay. “But now you mention it, I do recall looking up and seeing two men in the yard of the town hall.”

  “This was
late in the evening?” Clara confirmed.

  “It was dark,” Maud nodded. “I had just put on my light. I was sorting a hat for a wedding. The customer wanted these tiny beads sewn onto it, they were giving me a headache. I glanced up to stretch my neck and saw the two men in the yard. I didn’t think about it much. I assumed they were meant to be there.”

  “What were they doing?” Clara asked.

  “Standing at the back of the hall, I think,” Maud hefted her shoulders again. “I really was not paying attention. I glanced up, saw them and went back to my work.”

  Maud stopped and a thoughtful look crossed her face.

  “That was the night the police were all around the town hall, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Clara said.

  “Nothing more had been said about it, I assumed it was a false alarm. I did wonder afterwards if those men were thieves.”

  “You didn’t follow up on that thought?” Clara asked, surprised someone would be so lacking in curiosity.

  Maud took a last look out her window and then walked back to the dress she had partially unplucked.

  “I am usually too busy to worry about such things. I have so much to do. Honestly, I didn’t see how it concerned me, so I brushed it aside as one of those things,” Maud unfurled the hem of the dress and then started searching through her sewing box for just the right colour thread.

  “Between seeing the two men and the police arriving, did you see anything else?” Clara asked.

  Maud had decided on a dark blue thread and bit off a long strand.

  “What like?”

  “A man leaving the yard, maybe?”

  Maud closed one eye as she threaded a needle.

  “No, I didn’t see that. I was so absorbed in that hat.”

  “Is there anything more you can remember about those men?” Clara felt she was scraping the bottom of the barrel now.

  “One was taller than the other. And one was wearing a bowler hat,” Maud said.

  Clara felt the statement was hopelessly unhelpful, but at least she now had a witness to confirm that John Morley knew the person who had killed him, they had gone to the town hall together. They had stood outside briefly, and Maud had looked up and spotted them.