by Evelyn James
“No more than to say he was on a job. I guessed what that meant.”
Ezra’s limited store of knowledge had been exhausted. Clara concluded the interview, feeling rather disheartened. Would it be possible to trace these men with strange names? Well, at least she had names.
Bob was good enough to carry the jardinière home for her. He left her on her doorstep with a farewell after insisting she promise not to return to The Black Sheep without him. Clara could readily assure him of that. She had felt deeply uncomfortable in the place and would not like to be there alone. She dragged the ceramic pot into the front hall and gladly collapsed back into her armchair.
~~~*~~~
The next morning she wound her way to the police station. The desk sergeant was still absent, replaced by an earnestly helpful constable who allowed Clara through to the station archives as soon as she showed him her official card – the one Inspector Park-Coombs had arranged for her.
Clara was hoping the archives might hold a file or two on the names she had been given by Ezra. If the Brighton criminal fraternity had heard of them, it was probable they had been in the town at some point. Most of the Brighton crew did not travel far abroad (other than when forced to by the interference of law and order) so they would be unlikely to have associated intimately with thieves outside the town. Of course, they could have just been repeating gossip, but Clara had to hope.
She was trawling through the shelves marked S, looking for Stumpy Pete, when footsteps behind her alerted her to someone else being present. She glanced over her shoulder and saw the inspector.
“The constable at the desk informed me you were here,” he said. “I wanted a word. I’ve had a complaint from a Miss Sarah Butler.”
Clara stepped back from the shelves and faced the inspector, she was curious now.
“She came in to report that someone was poking about in her private affairs. Said a person claiming to be from the council had been enquiring about her through her friends. I rather had a hunch who that might have been.”
Clara had the decency to blush.
“Inspector, you must think me awful. I would not be investigating the woman if it was not for the fact she has made it her business to worm her way into my life,” Clara briefly explained about the newspaper advertisement and the business cards. “I admit, I was probably prying where I should not have been, but I was hurt and felt the need to defend myself.”
“I see your point,” the inspector nodded. “But don’t keep at it.”
“Easier said than done,” Clara sighed. “She has been hired to locate a missing husband, one Mr Butterworth who has absconded with a cat. Mrs Wilton is insisting on hiring me to resolve the same case.”
“Surely it is not Mrs Wilton’s concern?” Park-Coombs queried.
“Mrs Wilton makes everything her concern,” Clara sighed. “I will attempt to keep my distance, but the woman is making that difficult.”
Inspector Park-Coombs seemed amused.
“Perhaps it would reassure Mrs Wilton to know that the absconding husband is perfectly safe and living at a certain address in Hove.”
“You traced him?” Clara was surprised.
“Mrs Butterworth came to us first, claiming her husband was missing and had taken their cat with him. We had to investigate, but it did not take us long to locate him. Mr Butterworth made it plain that he does not want to be found by his wife.”
“What about the cat?”
“That was somewhat of a grey area,” Park-Coombs admitted. “The beast belonged to both of them, so we could not accuse Mr Butterworth of stealing it. In the end, we concluded that the affair was not a police matter and left it at that.”
Clara relaxed.
“At least I can inform Mrs Wilton that I know where the husband is,” she said. “She will be delighted.”
“Now, what are you doing down here?” the inspector glanced about at the shelves. “What are you looking for.”
“A needle in a haystack, it feels like,” Clara sighed. “I have three names, one of which might be the correct name for the thief who stole from Mr Jacobs. But the names are all I have. I was hopeful there might be files on them here.”
“Can I see the names?”
Clara handed over her notebook gladly enough. Park-Coombs read from it with a frown.
“They don’t ring a bell, though Ugly Dickson might be a fellow I arrested a few years back for housebreaking. They aren’t locals.”
“No. Londoners,” Clara agreed. “I am slightly stuck.”
The inspector stared at the names a while longer.
“I could ask my colleagues at Scotland Yard for some help,” he said at last. “No need to say it was for a private case, I could mention these lads have been named in connection with a burglary and I want to know more about them.”
Clara became excited.
“That would help enormously.”
“I’ll need a favour in return,” the inspector quashed her enthusiasm before it grew too much. “I have the superintendent breathing down my neck about employing a woman police constable. I don’t have the foggiest how to go about it. Usually, when I need an extra constable, I have names on my books of lads interested in becoming policemen and just looking for the chance. But I don’t have any women.”
“You want me to find you a woman?” Clara grinned, enjoying the pun of the statement.
“Something like that,” Park-Coombs returned the smile, but more coyly. “A suitable woman will be efficient, respectable and of good character. And preferably tall.”
“That rules out Annie,” Clara teased.
“I am sure you will think of someone, or rather, I hope you will!” Inspector Park-Coombs chuckled to himself. “You don’t want to join the force?”
“I value my independence,” Clara winked. “But I am sure there is some suitable girl out there.”
“I’ll listen out for any information on Miss Butler too,” the inspector reassured her. “Though I can’t say I have heard her name mentioned much. I did do a little digging after our last conversation, but I found nothing. As far as I could tell, Miss Butler had never existed in Brighton until a few weeks ago.”
“Really?” Clara was interested. “Yet the woman who gave her a reference said she had known her for five years, and implied that she had worked, albeit seasonally, in the town during that time.”
“People slip through the net of officialdom,” Park-Coombs was unperturbed. “She might never have been of interest to the police or anyone else for that matter. But I will keep looking, mainly so you don’t have to.”
He gave Clara a sly smile, which she opted to ignore.
“Thank you for your help Inspector, I ought to be on my way again.”
“I’ll drag out those names for you, if I can,” the inspector promised.
Clara headed back for the street outside. She felt a walk was in order, a chance to clear her mind and mull over the information she had so far received. Not just about the jade dragon either, but about Miss Butler too. That woman was causing far too much consternation for Clara’s liking. Just who was she and what was she about?
Chapter Thirteen
There was no getting away from it; Clara felt guilty. She felt she had thudded into Miss Butler’s case and interfered in a fashion she would normally associate with Mrs Wilton. And that was the worst of it, feeling she had behaved like Mrs Wilton and had gone completely against all her charitable words about people being entitled to start up businesses, even if it was the same business as her. The more she thought about it, the more she felt Miss Butler had a right to feel annoyed by Clara’s prodding around in her past.
Yes, there had been that debacle with the advert and the business cards, but perhaps it had been a careless mistake? A moment of naivety on Miss Butler’s behalf? Even if Clara was not so generous and imagined the woman had deliberately copied her, had that really necessitated Clara sticking her nose into the woman’s private affairs?
The more Clara dwelled, th
e more she felt she had behaved badly. She had felt threatened by the woman, that was the truth of it all. From the moment she had heard that someone else was running a detective business – another woman, at that – a knot of anxiety had settled in her belly and, like it or not, she had allowed that anxiety to fuel her behaviour. She could only imagine what Miss Butler must think of her. Here was the great detective seemingly going out of her way to unearth some dirt on her rival. How would Clara feel if the roles were reversed? She didn’t like that idea at all.
And what made things worse was that Clara had solved Miss Butler’s case for her, just as Mrs Wilton had demanded she do and in a way that Miss Butler could not hope to emulate. Miss Butler did not have the working relationship with Inspector Park-Coombs that Clara did. She could not ask him for help as Clara had loosely done. Yet again Clara had stomped in and shown up her rival in an awful fashion. Clara felt a bully, even if she had acted out of fear for herself, it certainly did not look like that now.
What was Clara to do? She had information that rightly belonged to Miss Butler, information that resolved her case. But Mr Butterworth had asked the police not to let his wife know where he was. If she told Miss Butler his location, was she wronging him?
Clara asked herself what she would do if it was her case. First, and foremost, she would do what she was hired to do. She would locate Mr Butterworth and ease his wife’s mind about his whereabouts. Then she would go see him and talk with him, perhaps arrange for him to write to his wife and assure her he was well. The cat was an extra complication, but Mrs Butterworth did deserve to have her concerns alleviated. Clara thought it would be awful to have someone missing and not to know if they were safe and well. You could imagine all sorts of things, horrific accidents, sudden illness, even murder. Without knowing the people directly in question, Clara could not say for certain what was best to do, but perhaps Miss Butler could. After all, it was up to her discretion to decide how to resolve this affair smoothly.
Clara had a choice; she could give Miss Butler the information she learned from the police, or she could say nothing and allow Miss Butler to continue her enquiries. The odds were, if she was any sort of detective, that Miss Butler would locate Mr Butterworth eventually. He was not precisely in hiding, the police had clearly found him very easily. The problem that pestered Clara’s thoughts was whether she was being pig-headed by withholding what she knew from Miss Butler. It would hardly look good if it was later discovered that Clara had known all along where Mr Butterworth was and had kept it from people. She could, of course, tell Mrs Butterworth directly, but that would once more be going behind Miss Butler’s back and she did not want to stir up the woman’s ire further.
In the meantime, while Clara dithered and said nothing, Miss Butler was racking up the hours she had worked for her client, costing Mrs Butterworth money, which as a now abandoned wife it was difficult to say she could afford. And here was Clara with that priceless information at her fingertips, keeping her mouth shut.
There was no way to resolve the crisis fairly. She was damned whichever choice she made. More than ever Clara wished she had never heard of Miss Butler and certainly that she had not embroiled herself in the woman’s case. There had been no call for it and now Clara had to make a difficult decision.
Before she had finalised her thoughts aloud, Clara knew in her heart which direction she was going to go. It was time to hold out an olive branch of peace to Miss Butler and hope the woman could forgive her. It would certainly be better than turning her into a stalwart enemy.
With this in mind, Clara headed for Miss Butler’s office address. She was relieved, as she came into the street, to see someone standing in the upstairs window of the property. She was hopeful this was Miss Butler herself, and not a client she was seeing. Clara wanted to speak to her alone, without anyone knowing she had paid a call on her rival. That strange, fearful jealousy was still coursing through Clara’s veins.
She opened the front door of the house and climbed the stairs to the door of Miss Butler’s rooms. There she knocked and waited. A broad shouldered woman with fiery red hair opened the door and scowled at the sight of Clara. Clara guessed this was Miss Butler.
“Sarah Butler?” she asked, her voice noticeably uneasy.
“Miss Fitzgerald,” Sarah Butler crossed her arms over her ample chest. She was a woman of fine proportions, but that did not make her ugly or ungainly. She carried her weight elegantly and her face was pretty, if no longer in the first flushes of youth. She was older than Clara, probably by a decade or so, and had been outdoors a lot. There was an earthy tone to her skin that was not gained from sitting before the living room fire. Her hair was her crowning glory. A rich auburn, that sparkled with hints of gold in the sun, it was an untameable mass of curls that felt about her face in tumbling waves.
She was a handsome woman, the sort a Victorian painter would have liked to have used as a model for painting an avenging Valkyrie. She gave the impression of a person capable of defending herself and her people should the need arise. Clara felt rather deflated before her. She did not have that sort of presence, nor the fiery hair. Clara was traditionally pretty, but considered herself largely unremarkable in appearance. Once again that pang of jealousy came over Clara; she could never hope to give off the aura of confidence and command that Miss Butler did.
“Could we talk?” Clara asked, her voice still alarmingly squeaky.
Miss Butler surveyed her with hard, green eyes.
“Aye, let’s talk,” she said at last, though the edge to her voice rather made Clara feel as if she was about to face an inquisition.
Clara was allowed into Miss Butler’s spartanly furnished rooms. Rather like Clara’s office, there was a front and back room, the front overlooking the street and with the biggest window which made it the natural space for Miss Butler’s office. There was a small fireplace, unlit as the day was still warm, and a solitary desk with a chair either side. The room was otherwise barren, no paintings to alleviate the cold pale yellow of the walls, no rug on the floor, no ornaments of any description. The room felt unlived in, as if someone had hired it that very morning to use and had not bothered to add their own personal touch to it.
“You can sit,” Miss Butler commanded, like a prison wardress accosting her charge.
Clara took a seat.
“Well, why have you come to disturb my peace?” Miss Butler asked, sitting in her own chair.
“Firstly, to apologise,” Clara said quickly, before she baulked at the woman’s tone and became defensive again. “I have been poking about in your private life.”
“You have,” Miss Butler agreed coldly. “Going to see my friends, interfering in my business.”
Clara’s patience was beginning to falter. She was aiming to make amends with the woman, but the woman’s tone was causing the devil inside her to start making her wanting to snap back. She drew in a discreet breath of air.
“Perhaps you will give me the chance to explain myself? I will admit it unsettled me to realise there was another female private detective in town, but I was not moved to do anything until I saw your advertisement in the Brighton Gazette and someone handed me one of your business cards,” Clara paused, waiting to see the response this statement received.
Miss Butler flicked her head a fraction to the side, her eyes didn’t quite meet Clara’s.
“What about them?” she said, though her pretence of innocence was not entirely convincing.
Clara now knew the duplication of her advert and cards had been deliberate. Miss Butler was clever enough to know what she was doing. This was not a woman who could be called naïve.
“You copied my own advertisement and business cards virtually word for word and even used the same design,” Clara said, her tone becoming sharp. She had been prepared to forgive naivety, but not this clear calculation. “I was shocked. Perhaps one could say, offended. It made me angry and that anger clouded my judgement.”
“There was no harm mea
nt,” Miss Butler deferred, though the anxiety on her face said otherwise.
“I think you hoped to tap into my reputation,” Clara said coolly. “Or to imply we were somehow connected. But I am prepared to forgive all that, if you are prepared to forgive the snooping I conducted after I discovered the duplication.”
Miss Butler laid her hands flat on her desk and considered everything for a moment or two. Slowly she raised her eyes.
“Neither of us has perhaps gotten off to a good start,” she said, she had lost the hardness in her tone now she saw that she too had caused offence. “Perhaps I had thought the adverts would encourage people to imagine I had some of your reputation, Miss Fitzgerald. You are, after all, quite renowned in Brighton. When I contemplated starting up my own business I feared I could not compete with you. I therefore tried to use deceit to achieve what I feared my own abilities could not. It was a careless thing to do, and I did not consider it as rationally as I should have done.”
“Much the same could be said about my attempts to learn about you,” Clara replied, the tension in the air lifting. “When I saw you had copied my advertisements I felt threatened. I created this idea in my head that you were endeavouring to steal all my business. I turned you into some deadly rival in my anxiety and the only way to alleviate my fears was to find out who you were and what you were about. I do regret my antics.”
“I do not want to drive you out of business,” Miss Butler said gently. “My only desire is to earn a living doing something where I am my own boss. I want to be independent. I suppose I have envied you from afar. Admired the way you have taken your own life in your hands and made it something that no one else can dent. I don’t want to be governed by others, and certainly not men.”
“Then we have a lot more in common than we first imagined,” Clara now smiled. “We should learn to work together and help each other, rather than try to fight each other. I rather feel we are much more similar than we might have first imagined.”
“You could be right,” Miss Butler returned the smile. It was hesitant at first, but then she relaxed a little and the grin broadened. “I have wanted to meet you for so long, Miss Fitzgerald.”
