by L. A. Nisula
Kate’s reply was cut off by a knocking at the door. “I’ll get it,” Mrs. Albright offered.
The knock hadn’t sounded particularly distinctive, so Kate and I were both surprised when Mrs. Albright led Inspector Wainwright into the kitchen. “They let you out!” I said before I had a moment to think about it.
“It was a hospital, Miss Pengear, not a prison.”
“Well, you’ll be happy to know we have the whole thing solved for you,” Kate said. “Sit down, and we’ll tell you all about it.”
Mrs. Albright steered him towards a chair, and surprisingly, he only offered token resistance. When he was seated, I pushed a cup of tea at him and Kate passed the cream and sugar and Mrs. Albright looked as if she was considering offering him some cake. He noticed too. “I think I’ll pass today, thank you.” There was no question he was thinking about the last piece of cake he’d had at Paddington Street.
“It wasn’t the cake, you know,” I told him as I happily accepted the piece she offered me.
“No, thank you.”
“Well, we have solved it,” Kate said, “and Cassie can tell you the details.”
I started before he had another chance to protest, telling him about page 334 in the record book and ending with, “And so, if you take the picture to Mr. Cantrell, he can probably tell you if he’s seen the man around. And if he can, that should be enough for you to search the books. Or you could look for a train ticket from the bank robber and see who bought it for him. Either way, you’ll have it connected to the case. And if anyone from the post office recognizes a picture of Mr. Emrick and saw him here the day after the murder, when Kate was having her moving boxes brought down, it will explain the hat.”
“Miss Pengear...”
“You were sick in bed. I thought you’d appreciate the help.” I was certain no one believed that, but it was something to say.
“Constable Kittering and Constable Edwards are quite capable...”
“I’m sure they are, but they were busy guarding you.”
Inspector Wainwright rolled his eyes and turned to Mrs. Albright. “Now can I go upstairs?”
“Was that why you came here?” I asked. We’d been in such a hurry to tell him about our deductions, none of us had bothered to wonder why he was here.
“I wanted to inspect the landing, yes.”
“The landing? Why...” I thought back to his investigation of the attic. “You had the cough drop on the fourth-floor landing.”
“Correct.”
“But there wouldn’t be any cyanide there. You didn’t get the cough drop here at all.”
Inspector Wainwright sighed. “The wrapper. The only wrapper in my pocket was blue.”
“And the one on the cough drop was green. Of course. But I thought you put it in your pocket.”
“So did I. It must have fallen out.”
“As long as you aren’t accusing anyone here, you may go up,” Mrs. Albright told him.
“Thank you.” Inspector Wainwright left the kitchen before she could change her mind.
We all followed him out and waited at the foot of the stairs to hear the result. Kate managed to look busy by poking around the telephone cabinet, which now appeared to be finished, while Mrs. Albright and I didn’t bother to pretend we were anything but nosy. Inspector Wainwright wasn’t gone long, not that it took long to find a wrapper when you knew where you’d dropped it, and we’d barely gotten ourselves settled when we heard him coming back down.
“Did you find it?” I asked as he came down the last steps. I knew he wouldn’t tell us if we weren’t direct.
He held up the green wrapper.
“And can you connect it to Mr. Emrick?”
Inspector Wainwright sighed. “Constable Edwards found a chemist who remembered selling him cyanide for rats in his cellar.”
“Then you just need to connect him to the cough drops. Mr. Cantrell can do that.”
He didn’t answer.
I took the clipping with the picture of the bank robber out of my pocket and held it up. Inspector Wainwright glared again, but he took the picture and put it in his notebook with the wrapper. “I’ll see myself out.”
“Well, I think he actually listened,” Mrs. Albright said when Inspector Wainwright had left and the front door had closed behind him.
“Then maybe this is over,” I said. “Pity he won’t come back and tell us how it all worked out.”
“I bet it will be in the papers,” Kate pointed out. “Between the gentlemen here, we have most of the papers in the morning. We can just have a look for ourselves. I mean, the final clue was in the paper, maybe the solution will be too.”
“You’re both welcome back in the morning to go through them,” Mrs. Albright offered. “Now go back through before the tea gets cold.”
The next morning, Kate answered the door of 334 Paddington Street again, this time without any bits of telephone in her hand. “He made the front pages of two papers.”
I hadn’t had a chance to see any of the newspapers yet. “Really? Inspector Wainwright ought to be grateful to us.”
“But he won’t be. And Cooper at the post office, I think you met him at the pub, the one who liked Mrs. Albright’s scones enough to be willing to help, sent a note over this morning saying he thought he saw the fellow on the front page of the Illustrated Gazette, that would be Mr. Emrick, helping to move the armchair back up to the attic and then leaving. He could have had the hat with him then. I telephoned Scotland Yard about it already. Come on through. Mrs. Albright has scones.”
I followed her inside, noticing the telephone cabinet looked complete as I passed it, and found the newspapers spread out amongst the tea things. There had been four arrests in the night of criminals who had disappeared over the last few weeks. All tied to Mr. Emrick at Billings and Sons. He had been helping them get out of town through the travel agency so if the police checked the train stations, there would be nothing suspicious in the purchases. One of the more lurid papers printed what they claimed was the balance of his bank account, and if it was indeed the amount, he had made a tidy profit off of it before Mr. Dently realized something was going on and tried to figure it out himself. Paddington Street was not mentioned at all.
“I’m sure you’ll be glad to get back to normal,” I said when I’d finished the last of the articles.
Mrs. Albright nodded. “Well, back to something familiar anyway. Finding a new tenant.”
“Are you going to rent Kate’s flat?” I asked, ready to ask to have a look.
“No, that’s really too small to let out.”
“Mr. Fowler’s done a runner,” Kate informed me.
“Not a runner exactly. He did pay two months’ rent before he left.”
“So he got back from Portsmouth and left again?” I asked, trying to figure out what was going on.
Kate nodded. “He was here for a whole two minutes. Then he got one look at the policemen poking around and said he wasn’t living in a den of iniquity. Said it would hurt his business.”
“What was it he sold again?”
Kate grinned. “Dr. Zuck’s Patented Shoe Lifts. Add three inches to your height without anyone noticing. Or at least as long as they don’t look at your feet, although they leave that bit out of the advertisements.”
I laughed. “Yes, a most respectable trade, I’m sure.”
“Were you looking for a flat?” Mrs. Albright asked in a very serious way, as if she’d realized why I’d asked about Kate’s.
“I am planning on staying in London, but I’m not sure this area is quite in my budget.” I wasn’t sure how much typing I’d be able to get or how my accounts from home would transfer over, and the insurance reward wouldn’t last forever, nice as it was.
Mrs. Albright shrugged. “You saved me from a murder charge; I think we can figure something out. At least come and have a look at flat C.”
“This really is a fantastic area,” Kate said as she stood up. “If the shop didn’t have
the flat above it, I’d be telling Ada we ought to consider moving in there ourselves. But I’ve got to get back and tell her how the whole thing got figured out. She’s terribly curious. And we do have quite a bit of setting up still to do.”
Mrs. Albright got up and gave her a quick hug. “Don’t be a stranger. Bring Ada by sometime. And don’t forget to send me an invitation when you have your grand opening. I want to see this shop.”
“And you call me whenever you need some tinkering done. You can use the telephone now. And Cassie, you should come for lunch tomorrow so you can give Ada all the details I don’t know.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Come along,” Mrs. Albright said as Kate went to put on her hat and coat. “Let’s have some cake and discuss the matter of rent.”
About the Author
L.A. Nisula has loved mysteries ever since she read her first one, which might have been an Encyclopedia Brown or a Nancy Drew or Basil of Baker Street or... She read them so fast it was hard to remember where they began. Now she is the author of the Cassie Pengear Mysteries, a series about an American typist living in a Victorian/ steampunk London. More information can be found on her website
http://www.lanisula.com
