Three Bodies in London

by L. A. Nisula

  “Dead?”

  “Well obviously. But I didn’t know that, did I? So I went into the room and turned him over, and that’s when I saw the blood on his shirt. I tried to take his pulse, but I couldn’t find it.”

  “But surely that wasn’t enough for them to arrest you. What did the police say when they arrived?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t there.”

  “You didn’t wait for the police?” My bad feeling was coming back, worse this time.

  “Are you going to let me tell this story?”

  “Fine, fine.”

  “So I rolled Mr. Hilliard’s body over and saw the blood, no pulse. And then I saw the dagger lying on the floor under him. It was small, with a silver handle with gears engraved on it.”

  At least she’d noticed some details. “Tell me you didn’t pick it up.”

  “Well, how else was I supposed to see what it looked like? I put it right back. And then I left.”

  “And you contacted the police how?” I was afraid I knew the answer.

  “Well, I couldn’t be caught there. Mother would have had me sent home if she knew I was involved in something like this. Not home, of course. To boarding school. Or a convent. Or—”

  “Too old, not Catholic—” I sighed. “So you didn’t want Aunt Lydia to know you were caught at a murder scene, but now you want her to read in the papers that you were arrested?” I was tempted to collect my things and tell the matron I was ready to leave Milly to her fate.

  “Laugh if you want. You don’t know how desperate she was to be rid of me. So I went home and forgot about it, and two days later I was arrested.”

  And Mrs. Fitzpatrick had said she was arrested two days ago, and as this was Monday, that put the murder on Thursday.

  “So were you going to help me?”

  I knew I couldn’t actually abandon Milly in jail, no matter how tempting it was. “Of course. But I don’t know how much I can do.”

  “Thank you, Cassie. I knew I could count on you. And how are you doing? Where are you staying?”

  I supposed I should be pleased she was somewhat concerned about me. “Mrs. Fitzpatrick is letting me stay in your rooms.”

  “She’s a great lady, isn’t she?”

  I really didn’t want to start discussing Mrs. Fitzpatrick and all the ways she differed from what Milly had told us she was. “We don’t have time for small talk, Milly. Who’s the inspector on this case?”

  “Inspector Peterson keeps questioning me.”

  “Then I’ll talk to him. And I’ll try to find out if that barrister is a good lawyer. If not, I’ll find you a better one.” And find a way to get old Farmington to pay for it. “And then I’ll try to find a way to get you out of here.”

  “I really don’t care. Mother would have a fit if I was convicted, I suppose.” She said that as if it were an advantage to the situation.

  “Forget your mother for one minute and think what would happen to you. You would go to prison, possibly for life, unless they decide to hang you.” I didn’t think they’d go for hanging, not for Milly, but I didn’t tell her that. Maybe that would be enough to scare her.

  “That would certainly make the papers back home.”

  “And then what? What would you do in prison?”

  “Refuse to see everyone. Maybe give an interview to the newspapers though. How else would they get the story?”

  “And around the glamour of a jailhouse interview? Do you know what you would do in prison all day?” I wasn’t sure myself—novels are not always the most accurate sources of information—but I was certain it wasn’t pleasant.

  “I’d agree to see you, of course, Cassie. You’re the only one who supported me through these difficult times.”

  So she wasn’t listening to me at all. “Can you think of anything that would help?” When she didn’t answer, I added, “I’ll start a letter to your mother. Is there anything you’d like me to tell her?”

  “Be sure you tell her she drove me to this with her—her callous, unfeeling nature.”

  “That won’t work; you wanted to come to England.”

  “Well, I’ll think about it in my cold, dismal cell. You won’t send the letter until I’ve had the chance, right?”

  I couldn’t take much more of her at the moment. “All right. I’ll try to come back tomorrow and see what I can do.” I collected up my gloves and tried to figure out what I was supposed to do to signal that I wanted to leave. The matron was already coming to get Milly. “I’ll see you as soon as I can.”

  “Thank you, dear cousin.” Whatever else she was going to say was cut off by the matron steering her towards the door.

  Outside the visiting room, I asked the first policeman I saw to direct me to Inspector Peterson. The third one I tried finally gave me the information. Apparently, the location of offices was some sort of secret. Inspector Peterson was in his office when I finally found it. He was an average-looking man, probably good-looking when he wanted to be, closer to retirement than not. He seemed the sort who made witnesses feel very comfortable and was constantly underestimated by suspects. He was seated at a small desk that barely fit in his office, studying some papers. He looked up when I came in. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m Cassandra Pengear. Milly Prynne’s cousin.”

  He gestured for me to sit, and somehow I got myself into the chair that had been wedged into the space between his desk and the door. Inspector Peterson turned to retrieve a file I assumed was Milly’s from the drawer behind him.

  “Miss Prynne’s case. It’s good to have a relative to talk to. I can’t quite figure her out. She doesn’t admit any guilt, but she doesn’t seem too put out by being in prison.”

  “She’s a little conflicted. She doesn’t want to go to prison, but she wants her family to hear that she has.”

  Inspector Peterson nodded as if he’d been expecting that answer. “I thought it was something with the family. It usually is.”

  “Is the barrister they’ve given her any good?”

  “As good as she can afford, I’m afraid, but very competent. Although, if the shares she mentioned are real, I could recommend a better one.”

  “You don’t seem too pleased about this case.”

  Inspector Peterson smiled. “There are a few suspects I’d be happy to see in prison. Unfortunately, she’s the only one whose prints are on the weapon, who knew about the body and didn’t call us, who—”

  “I get the point.”

  Inspector Peterson shrugged. “There’s only so much I can do.”

  “I’ll have to tell her mother.”

  “I don’t envy you that. Can I help in any way?”

  I stared at the desk. A crazy idea was forming in the back of my mind. “I have to sort out what I’m going to tell Aunt Lydia. Present the facts in the best way possible.”

  “Of course. Would you like me to inform her? It’s not pleasant, but it is part of what I’m paid to do. I didn’t have an address or I’d have done it sooner. Miss Prynne was a bit reluctant, or she actually has forgotten her mother’s address.” His smile told me how much he believed that.

  “No, no. I know how to deal with Aunt Lydia. But the more facts I have—”

  He almost smiled again. “So you’d like me to tell you everything I know. It isn’t so easy for an amateur to solve a crime. Not like books. And if there is a murderer on the loose, it is dangerous.”

  I gave him my most innocent look. “I must write to Aunt Lydia, so I need to figure out what to say, how to phrase it in the best possible light, how to—”

  We were interrupted by the door opening behind us. “Inspector Peterson, the coroner wants to have a word with you on the Earlham Street case.”

  “Thank you, Constable.” He looked at me. “I’m going to trust you.” He held out a folder. “This does not leave my desk. Do not say anything to the press. And above all, do not do anything stupid.”

  I took the folder. “Thank you.”

  I wai
ted until Inspector Peterson had picked up a different folder, presumably the Earlham Street one, and left the office, then I opened the file cautiously. I didn’t want to encounter a detailed drawing of an autopsy or something similar without warning. But I was safe. There were several typewritten sheets inside. I took my purse from the floor and pulled out the small notebook I’d been using to write down directions as I traveled, and settled in to read.

  The first page was a description of the crime itself. No address, I noticed, and very few details about the place, which made me wonder if Inspector Peterson had pulled out a few pages before showing the file to me. The victim was a Mr. Reginald Hilliard. He’d been found in his flat, stabbed to death. Very little of what was written down seemed to have anything to do with anything. The next page was a fingerprint report on the murder weapon. After reading it, I rather wished he’d taken that one with him. The only prints on the knife were Milly’s. How she could have been stupid enough to touch a murder weapon... I put that page aside. Clearly the murderer had wiped it down before Milly found the body and picked it up. The next page was Milly’s interview with the police. I pulled that out and put the rest of the file back on the desk. I hadn’t asked Milly many questions about what had happened when I’d seen her. Hopefully, this would give me enough of the answers that I wouldn’t have to pry them out of her.

  Inspector Peterson: Please tell me what happened when you entered the room.

  M. Prynne: I thought there might be something I could do, so I ran in and knelt beside him, gently rolling him over so I could take his pulse.”

  I almost laughed when I read that. I couldn’t see Milly gently rolling over a full-grown man. Most likely she’d been shaking him to get him to wake up and accidentally overbalanced him. And even she knew you didn’t need to roll someone over to take their pulse. I made a few notes and went on reading.

  Well, as soon as I’d turned him over, I could see that he was beyond help. There was blood all over the front of his shirt. I was trying to figure out where it came from, and there was a small dagger on the floor. I picked it up, and it was covered in blood, so clearly that was what had done it. I put it back where I found it and left.

  The rest of the interview seemed to involve Milly trying not to answer questions about her family and why she was in England. I sighed and flipped through the file, hoping for more pages of questioning. There weren’t any. So they hadn’t asked her why she didn’t summon help or if she’d tried to find a constable. I wondered if that was because they had asked it earlier or if they simply assumed the most obvious reason—she hadn’t contacted the police because she was the killer. Why couldn’t she have just found a nearby constable and brought him there? She couldn’t be in any worse of a mess than she was now.

  Under Milly’s interview, there was a summary of people who they had spoken to from the buildings across the street, all of whom said no one was home or there were servants who were too busy with their own work to be bothered looking out onto the street. Except for one witness, a woman who lived directly across the street from Mr. Hilliard and had been waiting for the postman. The way it was written down, it sounded as if the constable questioning her thought she was just being nosey and watching the street. In any case, she had seen a young woman come out of the building across the street, with blood on her skirt, and hurry off down the street. She gave a description of the woman, which clearly matched Milly, but then I already knew she’d been at the crime scene, so I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised. At least Milly hadn’t denied that she’d been in the building when the police had asked. The rest of the file had paperwork related to the summaries at the beginning, mostly notes from the officers involved. I read through them as best I could with their bad handwriting and technical abbreviations, but there wasn’t anything in them that I hadn’t seen in the rest of the file. I was considering trying to make a verbatim copy of Milly’s interview when Inspector Peterson returned. “You’re still here?”

  I glanced up from the file. I hadn’t realized I’d been there so long. “You look tired.”

  “Ah, trying to show sympathy, create a bond with the subject so they’ll be more likely to answer. You’re not bad at this.” Inspector Peterson collapsed into his chair and reached for the papers I was still holding.

  “But you’re better at it? All right.” I put the papers back into the file and handed it back to him. “I just wanted to ask you one thing. Why was the dagger under the body?”

  “He fell on it.”

  “But under the body? Not in it?”

  “She pulled it out and panicked and dropped it.”

  “But she says in her interview she picked it up, not pulled it out. When she found him, it was on the floor, under the body. Could it have fallen out?”

  “Miss Pengear, I appreciate your faith in me, I really do, but I have six other murders on my desk, not to mention the cases that are wrapped up but need to be presented in court, and who knows what will turn up tomorrow. I would like to look into your cousin’s case full time if I could, but I have to go to my superior and tell him why I am spending more time on a case with one suspect who was seen leaving the scene of the murder, who handled the weapon, and who failed to report the crime. If you really want to help your cousin, talk to her; get her to give you some piece of information that I can take to my superiors and say, ‘This warrants my time.’ Until I have that, I have to look at these cases with no suspects or ten suspects or—” He stopped dropping folders on the desk. “You understand?”

  “I do. You don’t think she did it any more than I do, but you need to work with proof.”

  “Exactly.” Inspector Peterson sighed and rubbed his forehead. “I’ll talk to the medical examiner and ask him to double-check that we have the correct weapon. Will that satisfy you? But in the morning, please?”

  “Thank you. I just want to be sure.”

  “She is your cousin. I understand.” He glanced at the clock. “They won’t let you see her again today. Come back tomorrow, and I’ll make certain you get in. I’ll even leave your name downstairs and reserve one of the better interrogation rooms for you, all right?”

  At least I’d be able to ask her a few more questions. “Thank you. I’m staying at Milly’s place until this is over.”

  “Then I’ll know where to contact you.”

  I could tell he was ready for me to leave, so I collected up my notebook and did so.

  During the Underground trip back to Nell Lane, I considered what I’d learned. Milly was in trouble. That was obvious. And as reasonable as Inspector Peterson seemed, it was perfectly clear to me that he was not going to lift a finger to help Milly unless I did something, brought some kind of proof either that she was innocent or that someone else was guilty. Then that was what I would do. Just as soon as I figured out how.

  I’d start with the victim. That was how they did it in books. Only I wasn’t sure how much I could do at the moment. Visiting Milly had taken what little of the day had been left after finding her, and as all I had was a name, there wasn’t even much to work with. Unless Mrs. Fitzpatrick knew more than she’d told me.

  When I got back to Milly’s, I half-expected to see Mrs. Fitzpatrick waiting for me in the front hall, but I’d been gone so long she’d either gotten bored or wasn’t as interested in Milly’s case as I’d thought. I had Milly’s key, so I made my way up to her rooms. When I opened the door, I found my bags piled on the floor near the door, all still locked, but I could see a few new scratches around the keyholes, so somewhere along the way, someone had tried to open them. I told myself not to immediately suspect Mrs. Fitzpatrick, but I still did. I wasn’t sure how long I was staying or what I would need, so I left the bags where they were and went to explore the rest of the apartment, not that there was much to explore.

  The sitting room was the largest, with a table by the window and a chair by a small stove. There was a tiny kitchen just off it, with a sink and a single burner that could be used to boil wa
ter, a short wall of cupboards, and not much else. On the other side of that wall was a small washroom. The bedroom was on the other side of the sitting room, and had just enough space for a bed, a wardrobe, and a dresser. It was clear the furniture had all come with the apartment, being mismatched, well-used, and not at all to Milly’s taste. The only thing Milly seemed to have added was a pair of packing boxes on either side of the bed that she was using for nightstands. My tour of my new lodgings complete, it was time to move on to something else constructive. I hadn’t eaten anything since the train, so that seemed a good place to start.

  I poked through Milly’s cupboards, but all I could find in the closet that served as her kitchen was some week-old bread and withered vegetables. Not even any flour or sugar I could use to make something. I let the cupboard door slam and went to see where I’d be sleeping.

  Milly’s bedroom wasn’t much more inviting. She hadn’t made the bed the day she’d been arrested, and in the tangle of sheets I found two mismatched socks and a hair ribbon before I gave up and decided to make a bed on the couch. Of course, if I was walking all the way back to the couch, it seemed worth the effort to put my shoes on and go looking for something to eat. At least that’s what I told myself and I retrieved my hat and coat and started out again.

  The neighborhood was not one I would have chosen. It was close enough to the theatres that there was a steady stream of well-dressed people about, but it was also close enough to the theatres that I was fairly certain there was plenty of pick-pocketing and other less-than-legal activities around as well. And I was fairly certain Milly’s place was closer to the hub of the latter rather than the former. That opinion was only strengthened by the pub, which was so noisy as I walked past that I kept walking, particularly as I’d never been in one and had no idea how to go about ordering food or finding a table. A little ways further down the street was a small grocers that was preparing to close. The clerk behind the counter put together a cheese sandwich for me while telling me all the other things I could get at his shop when they reopened in the morning, and convincing me to get a small packet of tea while I was there—probably wise as I had no idea what supplies Milly actually had in her flat, although I only bought enough for a pot to go with my sandwich, in case it was terrible.