by L. A. Nisula
The inspector stared at his hat as if he were trying to see if he could manage to ignore me. I took the pause as a chance to add,
“I mean, you were interested in her whereabouts, not anyone else’s, unless they could tell you where she was.”
He seemed to realize that he wasn’t going to get rid of me by ignoring me. He put his hat on and turned towards the door. “I’m sure you want to get back to your newspapers.”
So he had noticed the bundle I’d been carrying around since Nell Lane. “I’m quite happy to wait. This is much more interesting. You were going to tell me why you thought Mrs. Albright was a good suspect.”
“Miss Pengear, I’m sure your intentions seem laudable to you, but I am investigating a murder.”
I suppose, if he’d noticed the newspapers, I shouldn’t be surprised he’d caught Kate’s one mention of my name. “And I’m sure you consider it a very important case, which makes me wonder why you are wasting time at a place where no one knows him and he has no connection.” I wasn’t completely certain the last bit was true, but Kate and Mrs. Albright both seemed to think it was.
Inspector Wainwright started for the door. “I’m following the evidence.”
I assumed he meant the scrap of paper he’d shown us, but as he hadn’t explained what it was or where he’d found it, I wasn’t sure what to ask about it. I tried being more general, hoping he’d tell me something. “And the evidence tells you to look here?” Inspector Wainwright was already out the door as I asked that question, so I followed him out.
“As I am returning here, yes, that would be the logical assumption.”
I followed him out to the street, where the constable had done an admirable job of dispersing the crowd, unless they’d all just gotten bored and moved on. “And what sort of evidence makes you so certain someone here killed him? Who was he? Did he have some connection to the place?” The last was a bit risky, but if there was a connection, it would have been to one of the tenants and he would have been more interested in them. Unless Kate was wrong about Mrs. Albright, but I was assuming she wasn’t.
I thought Inspector Wainwright was going to keep walking, but he sighed. “If it will get rid of you... The only thing he had on him was the scrap of paper with ‘334 Paddington Street’ written on it. I believe you saw it when I showed it to Miss Ferris.” He started walking again.
So that was all he had, then. He really should have guessed that would not be nearly enough to get rid of me. I followed him down the block. “It could just as easily have stood for Paddington Station.”
“But it doesn’t.”
“But how can you be certain?”
This time, he didn’t stop walking. “Because three-three-four doesn’t refer to anything there.”
“Are you certain? Could it be a train?”
“There is no three-thirty-four to or from Paddington. Or a fifteen-thirty-four for that matter.”
“A luggage claim, then.”
“All use four digits, and the lockers only have two.”
“An address.”
“Yes, on Paddington Street.” He sighed. “The shops are all one-digit appended to the station address. I do know my job, Miss Pengear.”
I ignored that. “What about a time? Not necessarily of a train, but some sort of a meeting.”
“Not correctly punctuated, and it’s an oddly specific time.”
“There’s got to be something.”
“Yes, an address on Paddington Street.”
“Something besides that.”
Inspector Wainwright tried ignoring me, but that just gave me a nice bit of quiet for thinking. “Does he have any connection to this place besides the paper?”
No answer, not that I was surprised.
“I mean, he clearly doesn’t live in the building. Does he work nearby? I assume you know where he works. Have you learned anything there?”
“Tell Mrs. Albright I will be returning after the other tenants return from work. Constable, is that cab for us?”
I couldn’t very well follow him into a cab, certainly not when he had two police constables there with him, so I turned and started back to Kate’s building.
“Did you learn anything?” Kate asked as soon as I was inside 334 Paddington Street.
“Only that the inspector is coming back to question everyone again, and that doesn’t help much. I couldn’t even get a name.”
“At least we have that,” Mrs. Albright said from the door to her flat. “Lewis Dently. At least I assume that’s his name. When the inspector got here, he asked us both if we knew him or had had any dealings with him.”
“That’s a start. If we could find his address, we might be able to learn something about him.”
“I have a London directory somewhere,” Mrs. Albright offered. “Why don’t you two come in and have some scones while I look for it?”
I glanced over at Kate, but she had already started down the hall towards Mrs. Albright’s flat.
Once we were in her flat. Mrs. Albright led us back through to the kitchen. “I left the kettle on, so tea should be ready in a minute, and I hid the scones from the policemen when I realized they were going to be irritating. They’re in the breadbox.”
Kate went to retrieve the scones and nodded to the teacups in the drying rack, which I collected and brought them to the table where we had been questioned not long before. Kate brought the plate of scones and another of butter and set them out beside the cups. Mrs. Albright brought over the teapot. “That should just take another minute. There’s some strawberry jam behind you, Miss Pengear, and I think that’s everything.”
I turned and found the jam in the cupboard behind me.
Mrs. Albright put a knife beside the jar and surveyed the table. “That should do. Help yourselves while I find that directory.”
Once Mrs. Albright was out of the room, Kate leaned across the table and whispered, “She bakes when she’s nervous. It doesn’t affect the quality, though.”
I bit into one of the scones and agreed with her assessment of their quality. I could hear Mrs. Albright going through a cupboard, so it seemed safe enough to ask, “Does he suspect you as well?”
“I don’t think so. It must have happened sometime between three and six since that was the time he was interested in, and I was at the aviary workshop all afternoon teaching my replacement what he’s supposed to do and then at a little staff party someone arranged at tea time.”
“That was nice of them.”
“I think they wanted the excuse to stop working and eat cake. Still, there was cake, so it wasn’t a total loss. And it means I had someone with me for most of the afternoon. Then Ada met me in the lobby, and we went for dinner at a pub near the new shop, so I don’t have more than a few minutes together unaccounted for. Which is good, except that it doesn’t help Mrs. Albright at all.”
“It does give us one less person to prove innocent, which is helpful.”
Mrs. Albright came in just then with a thick hardback book, and it didn’t seem polite to discuss Kate’s very useful alibi when Mrs. Albright was there without one. Mrs. Albright put the book on the table and started re-arranging the tea things.
We had our tea and scones in silence, which gave me a chance to think, trying to put the pieces I’d managed to get from the inspector together and follow his logic. I thought, if I could figure out how he got to Mrs. Albright, perhaps I could see how to point him somewhere else. Instead, I came up with another question. “If all the victim had on him was a piece of paper with ‘334 Paddington St’ written on it, how did the inspector know his name?”
Kate took another scone then offered me the plate. “Someone must have identified him.”
“How? How did he know who to ask?”
“I suppose they came forward.” Kate paused with her knife half-way to the butter dish as she realized what I was getting at. “And how would they have known to come forward? It must have been in the newspaper.”
“And
with enough information that someone recognized him. I wonder which one.”
Kate slathered her scone with jam. “If he was killed yesterday, someone at the evening paper could have gotten a scoop, or it would have been the morning papers.”
“That makes sense. The ones I brought are all old, from around the time of Milly’s problems.”
“There are a few from this morning in the entryway,” Mrs. Albright said, getting up from her chair. “We can sort through those and see if there’s anything useful.”
Kate grabbed the rest of her scone and followed Mrs. Albright out into the hallway while I flipped through the directory until I found a listing for Mr. Lewis Dently on Old Church Street in Chelsea. I scribbled down the address then went to see what Kate and Mrs. Albright had found.
“Here it is,” Kate said as soon as I’d joined them near the stairs. “It’s in all the papers, but this one has the longest story.”
I took the newspaper Kate held out and read the article she pointed to, which was in one of the last pages of the main section, important enough to report, but not important enough to give it good placement. It started off saying the police had not yet identified the victim and gave a brief description: average height, brown hair, wearing a brown suit with a blue and yellow waistcoat, then went on to describe the crime in vague terms. I was able to pull out a few facts, namely that he had been hit over the head and his body had been found in Fairholt Lane. I handed the paper back to Mrs. Albright. “That’s more than we had.”
“So you’ll help us sort this out?” Kate asked, although she seemed quite confident in my answer.
“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to go have a look at his building since I did find an address.”
“Excellent,” Kate said. “And I’ll speak to Mr. Dobson when he gets back and find out what he was up to yesterday.”
Mrs. Albright seemed to perk up at the idea. “And I’ll go into Mr. Fowler’s flat and see if he left anything behind that might help. I’m sure there will be something I can say I thought he’d want me to forward on to him in Portsmouth. Or I could put his letters safely in his sitting room so they don’t get lost.”
“Then that’s set,” Kate said cheerfully. “Can you come back tomorrow, Cassie, and we can all compare notes?”
I agreed and we sorted out the time, then I left to find Old Church Street.
Mr. Dently lived in a rather large apartment building in a respectable sort of neighborhood. There was a small park nearby, and several shops along the way, so it seemed to be a desirable location. I found his address and went up to the door. There didn’t seem to be any sort of bell system, so I was at a loss for how to get someone to let me in. Out of desperation, I tried the door, only to find it wasn’t locked, so not a particularly secure building.
The lobby inside was small, with nothing worth stealing, unless someone wanted a pair of threadbare chairs, so probably a cheaper building in a nice area. I wasn’t quite certain where to go from there. I had the number of Mr. Dently’s apartment, but I assumed it would be locked and I wouldn’t be able to see anything. The building itself told me very little beyond the fact that he was a moderately prosperous, moderately respectable sort of gentleman, which I had already gathered. I needed to talk to someone. The question was who.
I supposed I could try to find his apartment then see who his neighbors were. If he was the sort who knew his neighbors. And if they weren’t too upset by his death to talk to a complete stranger about it. I was starting to realize I ought to have planned a bit better.
I had almost decided I would try the stairs and see if I ran into anyone when I heard someone moving around behind one of the doors down the hall from me. It seemed to be a sort of common area, so I crossed to the door and found that it wasn’t locked. On the other side was a dining room with a long table. The sound I’d heard was a maid setting out plates. “You know lunch isn’t for another—oh, hello, miss. Were you looking for someone?”
She sounded like someone who had at least a passing acquaintance with the tenants of the building, so quite possibly what I needed. “Not really. Or I’m not sure who I’m looking for. I was trying to find some information on someone who used to live here. Mr. Dently.”
“Oh.” She sounded serious but not particularly sad. “You said used to, so I take it you know what happened?”
I nodded. “A friend of mine is a suspect, only she’d never met him, so I was hoping to learn a little more about him. Maybe find someone who would make a better suspect.”
The maid nodded. “I can see why you would want to. I’m afraid I don’t know much, though. Our residents keep to themselves. That’s why Mrs. Babcock offers meals. She thinks it will give the place a more neighborly feel. But most of them just eat and walk out.”
“Still, you know more than I do. What was he like? Was he one of the ones who ate and walked out?”
“Only on Saturday and Sunday. The rest of the time he took his meals at his office, or near his office, or somewhere that wasn’t here. There’s no cooking in the rooms, you see.”
I nodded, hoping to encourage her. When she didn’t say anything more, I asked, “Do you know where he worked?”
“Somewhere in Kensington. Billings and Sons or something like that. They arrange travel for businessmen. I know that because one of the few conversations he had at dinner was with Mr. Abbott in 27. He was going to travel to one of his company’s offices in Dorset and Mr. Dently was telling him the best hotel to book there.”
I made note of the company name. If it wasn’t quite right, perhaps Mrs. Albright’s directory would be able to help. “Was he a helpful sort of person, then?”
“Not particularly. Not a rude sort or anything. Just not all that interested in the other tenants. Not that any of them are interested in each other.”
“So you liked him?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t dislike him. I didn’t particularly speak to him.”
There didn’t seem to be much else she could tell me about Mr. Dently, but at least I had a business address for him, or the means to get one anyway. “Were the police here?”
“They were indeed. Certainly didn’t like that inspector, I can tell you. He asked me when everyone left the building yesterday, if anyone came back, and quite a lot about Mr. Dently’s habits, most of which I couldn’t answer. And then he asked if I’d ever been to Paddington Station, which of course I have. Hasn’t everyone?”
That meant he really had looked into the possibility that the note was about the station and not Mrs. Albright’s building. I realized I hadn’t been there, and that it was another likely spot to try. “Do you remember anything he seemed particularly interested in?”
“The rent, if it was on time. It was. Mr. Dently paid just like he was supposed to. And if I’d seen him slipping out at night, which I hadn’t, not recently. The last time was when he went to the theatre. I think someone had given him the tickets.” She shrugged. “The rest of the questions were about his movements over the last week, but I couldn’t tell him much. We don’t really monitor when people come and go, so I wouldn’t have noticed if he went out at an odd time or came back out of his usual way. I didn’t think he’d done anything different, but I couldn’t be certain.”
“Is there anything else you’ve thought of since? Even something strange or small?”
She shook her head. “He asked me the same thing, more or less, and there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary way of things, hasn’t been since the milkman was sweet on the chambermaid next door and confused all our orders, but that was months ago.”
“Is there anyone in the building he was friendly with? Someone who might know if he was in some sort of trouble?”
“No, he kept to himself. Any friends he had were away from here.”
“And do you think Mrs. Babcock would know anything more?”
“I doubt it. I spend more time down here than she does, so I wouldn’t think so.”
Then there didn’t seem to be
much point in asking to speak to her. I couldn’t think of anything else to ask, so I said, “Thank you for helping me. This is a lot more information than I had.”
“I hope some of it helps your friend.”
“I think it will.” I wasn’t sure how, but surely something had to.
As I walked from Mr. Dently’s building to the Underground station, I spotted a clock on the side of a bank and realized it wasn’t nearly as late as I’d thought. Plenty of time to visit Mr. Dently’s office and see if anyone knew anything helpful. I assumed Inspector Wainwright had already been there. If I’d been able to find out about it, I hoped a policeman would be able to. But it was worth a visit. I wandered around the neighborhood until I found a post office and went in to ask for a business directory. Billings and Sons was listed, so I scribbled down the address and set out for another part of London.
~ * ~ * ~
Billings and Sons wasn’t terribly far from Mr. Dently’s apartment building, so I had no trouble finding it. It was also open, which certainly made things easier. The office was a small one, with three desks, two of them occupied, arranged to give each person a bit of space to see clients, a long reception desk in front of the door set up neatly with a schedule book and a calendar and a dish of candies but no receptionist, bookshelves along the two smaller walls, and the normal sort of office clutter: a filing cabinet with an overflowing tray of things to be filed, a hat stand with three hats haphazardly hung there, a cabinet that held spare supplies. There seemed to be a back area with a closed door leading to it and nothing to indicate what was back there. I turned my attention to the desks.
