The Fossil Murder

by Evelyn James

  “I thought Nellie had taken a liking to your brother?” Mrs Wilton interrupted, casting a stern glance at Tommy.

  “That was an unfortunate misunderstanding,” Clara explained patiently. “Tommy was working on my behalf to gain information about Mr Darling.”

  “I am very alarmed by all this,” Mrs Wilton looked more angry than alarmed. “It appears you are saying that you think this Victor fellow, though clearly unsuitable, should be considered a worthy suitor for Nellie?”

  Clara could see that tact was not going to win the day, Mrs Wilton was not going to be convinced by gently mentioning Victor’s good points. She had to be told bluntly why Clara thought Victor should remain with Nellie.

  “Mrs Wilton, I have spent time with Nellie these last few days, as has Tommy, and we have come to understand the girl a great deal. For one thing, she is truly cynical about life and about her place in this world. She seems to think that money means power, and that her only worth comes from her wealth. You must appreciate that is a very sad state of affairs, even if Nellie does not yet understand that. She is young and naïve, but I think she could end up in a very bad position if she carries on with the notion that her biggest bargaining chip in her life is her inheritance. You have good cause to be concerned about the men who pursue her,” Clara spoke fast, when Mrs Wilton looked about to interrupt, she quickly carried on. “We are all aware that it is not just poor men who might look at a woman for her money over who she is. This world of ours is built on an idea of marrying for money, and the higher up the social scale you climb, the more pronounced that idea becomes. There is nothing more fearful to a man who has a fortune than the thought of losing it all.

  “Nellie is in a position where scoundrels will flock to her and they may not be penniless scoundrels. There are many men of a reasonable background with a similar affection for money who would see Nellie’s wealth as something they could use. Nellie, herself, would become no more than a pawn in this game. Which is awful, especially as Nellie believes she cannot expect love from any marriage she makes. It all creates a very unhappy situation. Nellie’s entire future could be staked on this.”

  “Precisely!” Mrs Wilton burst in, unable to hold back any longer. “We must keep the wolves from her door!”

  “Which is exactly why I suggest you allow Victor Darling to continue his courtship. In fact, I suggest you embrace him, for that man genuinely cares about Nellie’s wellbeing and that is far more important than whether he is an engineer or an earl,” Clara did not add that she thought the odds of Nellie finding another man able to look past all her faults would be slim.

  Mrs Wilton froze, Clara’s words suddenly hitting her. She opened her mouth, but words did not come out.

  “You asked me to find out all I could about Victor,” Clara continued. “I found out that he is, yes, an engineer, but that he has a strong affection for Nellie and a remarkable loyalty to her. I believe he will take good care of her. Whether she will ever consent to marry him I really do not know, I think it possible she will grow tired of him and cast him aside. Which would be a shame for her, but not something I can change. Nellie is very headstrong and a touch over-confident, she does not take advice readily.”

  “No,” Mrs Wilton said slowly. “She doesn’t really listen to anyone.”

  She was silent a while, thinking about what Clara had said.

  “You really think this Victor Darling would look after her?”

  “I think his influence on her a very positive thing,” Clara promised.

  Mrs Wilton groaned and sank back on her couch.

  “But he is an engineer! Nellie’s mother would be appalled!”

  “Wouldn’t she want to know there was someone out there who cared for her daughter and wanted to look after her?” Clara said. “There are plenty of eligible young men who would marry Nellie for her money and then misuse her.”

  Mrs Wilton screwed up her face, trying to get her head around everything she had been told.

  “Oh Clara! I can’t fathom this all. Surely there must be a nice young man out there who would care for Nellie and who is also of a similar social rank?” Mrs Wilton’s eyes flicked back to Tommy, and he edged away a little.

  “I have done my part,” Clara had no more energy to argue the matter. “I think we both know that Nellie will do as she pleases, and nothing anyone says can change that. She may decide tomorrow that Victor bores her and she will be looking for someone else to keep her amused. Then this discussion will be all in vain.”

  Mrs Wilton seemed to resign herself. She nodded her head.

  “Nellie is a complicated girl, you are very right. I am glad I asked for your help. Whatever comes of this Clara, thank you for taking the time to find out all you did about Victor Darling,” Mrs Wilton sighed. “I am not blind to Nellie’s nature. Maybe if I met this Victor and saw how he treated her, it would put my mind at ease?”

  “I think that would be a good idea,” Clara smiled, pleased to seeing Mrs Wilton was mellowing. “Now, I don’t wish to disturb you any longer. I hope you feel better soon.”

  Clara shuffled Tommy out of the room as Mrs Wilton laid back her head and shut her eyes. They escaped the house without alerting the maid. Tommy puffed out his cheeks as they stood outside.

  “Thanks Clara, for not mentioning my, ahem, interference in this matter.”

  Clara chuckled.

  “Mrs Wilton doesn’t need to know about that. And I meant every word I said, I think Victor could be very good for Nellie Holbein, if only she will let him,” Clara glanced at her watch. “Now, let’s see how speedily the South African authorities respond to a telegram from England.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  There was activity at the station when Clara arrived. A police constable was rushing into the back office and Dr Deáth was lurking on the stairs. He grinned at Clara.

  “I’ve run a crude test to determine if that red stain on the mallet is blood. The results are positive,” he told her. “Also, the stains on the shirt and jacket are blood too. I can’t say for sure whose, or if it is human, but the inspector seems pleased.”

  “Where is he?” Clara asked.

  Dr Deáth’s eyes lit up.

  “He just had word that a telegram had arrived for him, he seemed excited by it.”

  Clara felt excited too. She could only hope that telegram contained confirmation of what she suspected.

  “The mallet looks like the right sort of weapon to have killed John Morley?” Clara asked Dr Deáth, with one eye looking out for the inspector.

  “Oh yes, I have no concerns about that,” Dr Deáth said merrily.

  “Clara!”

  Despite keeping her eye open for him, Inspector Park-Coombs had managed to appear without her noticing. He looked serious, but there was a liveliness to his tone that made Clara hopeful he had good news.

  “Well?” She hurried over to him.

  “Your suspicion was accurate,” Inspector Park-Coombs smiled at her. “Turns out that the South African police had no trouble informing me of Sam Gutenberg’s origins. He was not lying about his family being extremely wealthy and owning mines. His stepfather, Gustav Gutenberg, is one of the richest men in the country. Sam’s mother emigrated to South Africa and met Gustav. He was considerably older than her and looking for a wife, she was looking for security for herself and her son. They married and Sam took on his stepfather’s name. He has six half-brothers and sisters from his mother’s second marriage.

  “The police in South Africa informed me that there has been some family trouble recently. Sam is, of course, his mother’s eldest, but in the eyes of his stepfather he is an interloper and he places his own children over Sam. This has caused tension, especially after the recent death of Sam’s mother. There was a violent scuffle between Sam and his stepfather at the funeral and the police were summoned.

  “Shortly afterwards, Sam disappeared without a word. His stepfather cared enough to report him missing and the South African police have been
looking for him ever since. They never expected he would turn up in Brighton.”

  “That still does not explain why Sam killed John Morley,” Clara pointed out.

  “Why don’t we ask him,” the inspector said.

  He headed to the cells at the back of the station where Sam Gutenberg was being held. Clara followed. Sam Gutenberg scowled at them when they first appeared, then he looked away.

  “Samson Baumberger,” Inspector Park-Coombs held up the telegram. “The son of a man who died in Germany in remarkably similar circumstances to John Morley. Maybe you could explain that.”

  Sam snorted and ignored him. Clara stepped towards the bars of the cell.

  “They never found who killed your father,” she said. “All these years, that has burned you. And your mother remarried, but her new husband could never be a father to you. He was not your father. Not the man you visited in the museum and who showed you around the displays. Your father did not deserve to die, and no one ever explained why it happened.”

  Sam’s face had become grim, he closed his eyes tight shut.

  “I’m guessing you laid some blame on the shoulders of Dr Browning. Had he been in that room when it happened, your father would still be alive. It would have been Dr Browning dead on that floor instead,” Clara continued.

  “No!” Sam snapped, his head shooting up to her. “You are the same as them all!”

  Clara was confused.

  “What do you mean?”

  Sam gave a bitter laugh.

  “I suppose the game is up then?” He looked at the inspector. “You have all the evidence you need, you know who I am, who I really am. And you have the mallet and my clothes. You just don’t know why, why it all came about. I almost feel like keeping that my secret, except by doing so I let that damn man off the hook.”

  “Dr Browning?” Clara asked, somewhat surprised.

  “Yes! Him! If I never speak up, if I never explain, then you will go around thinking that he was some innocent academic and no one will ever know what he is really like,” Sam’s eyes were bright with tears, fierce grief had been buried within him too long. “You still think he is this bumbling old man who could not hurt a fly? You are wrong, and I tried so hard to make you look again, but no one would see past his façade!”

  “But you killed John Morley,” Clara said, trying to bring some sense to this riddle.

  “Yes, I did, but only so that people would open their eyes and start to ask questions about my father’s death in Germany. The problem was, it was all so well hidden. I didn’t bank on that, I had to give you so many clues before you discovered that story and, in the end, that was my undoing,” Sam rubbed at his eye. “I had no argument with John Morley, he was just a convenient dupe. He was a drunk and so many people hated him. I didn’t think he would be much missed and he was so keen on the money.”

  “You hired him to accompany you to the town hall on the pretext of smashing the cases,” Clara understood. “When you told us he intended to get someone to help him it was all a lie to throw us off your scent.”

  “I could see that you were heading in the wrong direction,” Sam shook his head. “You were supposed to assume that no one else could have committed the crime except Dr Browning. I thought I made that so obvious. And when the Earl of Rendham appeared and began fussing about the time the investigation was taking, I honestly thought I had succeeded. Sooner or later you would just accept the obvious and arrest Dr Browning. I didn’t expect you to be so damn curious! You asked so many questions!”

  “And then Harry Beasley got in the way,” Park-Coombs mused.

  “I could see it was all going wrong, so I tried to point you in the right direction again,” Sam grimaced as he remembered his efforts. “Instead, you came after me. You were not meant to even consider me a suspect.”

  “You certainly had me fooled for a while,” Clara said. “But, ultimately, you were trying too hard. John Morley died, not because you had a grudge against him, you didn’t even know him, but because you wanted to see Dr Browning accused of murder.”

  “I wanted to see him hang,” Sam growled the words. “It would have been for the wrong man’s death, but he still would be dead and his name shamed forever!”

  “Because your father was killed that night in Germany instead of Dr Browning?” Park-Coombs said in astonishment.

  Sam leapt from the bed in the cell and slammed his hand against the bars.

  “No! Because Dr Browning killed my father! It was not some fluke of fate that my father died that night, it was because Dr Browning intended it!”

  “You really believe that?” Clara said in astonishment, thinking of the ailing academic in his hospital bed.

  “I know it!” Sam insisted. “My father discovered that Dr Browning had miscatalogued a number of exhibits, that was when it began. My father could not fathom how an academic of Dr Browning’s standing could make such simple mistakes when cataloguing finds. He started to watch his mentor more closely and he noticed other little mistakes and he started to wonder. So he contacted the university were Dr Browning was supposed to have obtained his degree and learned that Browning had never gone there.

  “Dr Browning was a fraud. He had no formal qualifications, but he had convinced the right people that he knew all about fossils, given himself a fake degree and then found a job in a prestigious museum. Most people would never have noticed the mistakes he made, but my father was a genius. He knew more about fossils than anyone I have ever met. He was bitterly disappointed when he learned the truth about his mentor, the man he looked up to.

  “He confronted him, pointed out the mistakes he had made and told him that he knew everything. He said he would tell the university authorities if Dr Browning did not confess himself. The hypocrisy of Dr Browning still rankles me now! He had no university education, just like my father, but he had always told my father that he would never achieve a name for himself because of that lack. All the time he had been playing the role of a doctor without a degree!

  “My father told me all about this, made me promise to keep it a secret. I think he was worried. I think he saw how dangerous a man Dr Browning really was. And the next night he died, he was murdered and people kept saying it was some intruder who had come to steal exhibits. But I knew better! I knew Dr Browning had killed him! No one would listen to me, I was just a boy, and all these years I have hated him. And then my mother died and I…”

  Sam crumpled back on the bed and hung his head, his hands flopped between his legs and he sagged like a ragdoll.

  “I wanted to frame Dr Browning for murder. To bring justice to my father. Maybe you would even look into the Germany case again, but even if you didn’t, Dr Browning would hang and he would see the irony, if no one else did.”

  “You murdered a stranger to get justice for your father?” Park-Coombs was appalled as he spoke. “An innocent man was nearly in danger of being tried for that crime. You destroyed a stranger’s life to get revenge?”

  “You don’t understand,” Sam coughed as tears started to overwhelm him. “No one ever understands. My father was a good man. I had to bring him justice.”

  Clara had heard enough.

  “Because of you a woman is widowed,” she said coldly. “John Morley might not have been the nicest of men, but he meant something to her. You had no right to take his life for such a callous reason. What would your father have thought of that?”

  Sam clutched his head in his hands and began to sob. There was nothing more Clara wanted to say. She walked from the cells and Park-Coombs followed.

  “Well, we solved it,” he said to her as they reached the front desk. “We know who killed John Morley.”

  “And we know why,” Clara said without any satisfaction. “The world is wicked.”

  “Men are wicked, Clara, the world just happens to be the place we all live in,” Park-Coombs shrugged.

  Clara shook her head, all she wanted right then was to go home.

  ~~~*~~~

&n
bsp; Clara drifted about the house for the rest of the afternoon, mulling over what Sam had told her about Dr Browning. He was right when he said no one could imagine Dr Browning as a killer. Did that mean they had been blind to what he had done? Had he really killed Sam’s father? They had no proof other than the son’s suspicions and he hardly appeared reliable after his own involvement in a murder to frame Dr Browning. Clara could not help but wonder, however, if she had looked a murderer in the eye and not recognised him for what he was.

  She was distracted from her thoughts by the sound of raised voices. Clara headed towards the parlour where Annie was in tears and Tommy was trying to console her.

  “Whatever is going on?” Clara asked.

  “He has bought a fancy necklace for that woman!” Annie declared furiously, pointing to the jewellery box Tommy had bought earlier. “I found it in his sock drawer when I was putting away some clothes.”

  “Annie won’t believe me when I say it is for her!” Tommy snapped, looking irate that he was being called a liar.

  “What would I do with that?” Annie demanded of him. “I don’t wear jewellery, it is the sort of thing that Miss Holbein would wear!”

  “I have no interest in Miss Holbein! I have spent most of the week trying to get rid of her!” Tommy threw up his hands and stormed out of the room.

  “Annie,” Clara took her friend by the arms, “I was with Tommy when he bought the necklace. It is for you. All right, I admit it is not quite your cup of tea, but it was meant as a gift.”

  Annie wiped at her eyes and looked rather abashed.

  “Really?”

  “Yes. You are being much too harsh on Tommy, he loves you to pieces. Why have you become so silly over this misunderstanding with Miss Holbein?”

  Annie sniffed.

  “I just…” she shook her head. “I don’t know, I just have this terror he is going to realise one day that I am just an ordinary girl. I’m a good cook, but what else am I? You are so clever Clara, and Tommy is too. I sometimes think he deserves someone more interesting than me. What can he see in me, after all?”