Mrs. Jeffries Speaks Her Mind (23 page)

The end of Randolph Road was almost directly across from the Kettering house. “Did you see where she went when she got out of the cab?”

He shook his head. “Once she got out and paid me, I just wanted to get the rig out of there. By then the roads were startin’ to flood.”

“Do you remember what time you dropped her?”

“It was still pretty early in the day,” he replied. “Probably around a quarter past nine or thereabouts. But I can’t say for certain. I didn’t look at my watch.”

From the cabby’s comments, Smythe suspected he knew who this woman might be, but he wanted to know for sure. There were lots of beautiful women in London. “You said the lady was very pretty. What did she look like?”

He laughed. “Oh, she was a beaut, she was. Blue eyes and dark hair. That’s a combination you don’t see too often. She had lovely skin.”

“About how old was she?” he pressed. All the inspector had told Mrs. Jeffries was that Olga Richards was beautiful. He needed as detailed a description as possible. “And what was she wearing?”

“I’m not too good at guessin’ ladies’ ages,” he said, frowning, “but I’d say she was in her thirties. As to what she was wearing, she had on an overcoat and beneath it I think she was wearin’ something in a maroon color. But that’s all I can recall. Frankly, by the time we got to Randolph Road, I was too busy tryin’ to keep the rig on the road to pay too much attention to her clothes.”

 

Danny Taylor was a tall, wiry fellow with thin blonde hair, bright blue eyes, and a weathered complexion that spoke of hours of outside work. “Why would you be offerin’ to buy me a pint?” he asked, his expression wary.

They were in the public bar of the Hanged Man Pub just off Brook Green and Wiggins was glad he’d put plenty of coin in his pockets this morning. “Because I’m a private inquiry agent and I think you might have some information that might ’elp my client.”

Taylor leaned against the bar. “What kind of information?”

“Just ordinary bits and pieces,” Wiggins replied. He pushed up to the counter and waved the barman over. “I saw you comin’ out of the Kettering house and I was hopin’ you weren’t some toff that wouldn’t ’elp a workin’ bloke make a living.”

“I’m not a toff,” Taylor replied. “I was there for a funeral reception. My employer was just murdered.”

“What’ll you have?” the barman asked.

Wiggins looked at Taylor expectantly. “A pint for me, please,” the gardener finally said.

“I’ll have the same,” Wiggins told the barman.

“So what do you want to know about?” Taylor asked.

“I’m makin’ inquiries about your household. You know, the murder,” he replied.

“I thought that’s what the police were for.” Taylor nodded his thanks as the barman gave him his beer.

Wiggins paid him, picked up his pint, and nodded toward an empty table by the door. “Let’s move over there. It’s a bit more private-like.”

They went to the table and sat down on the bench seats. “The police aren’t the only ones with an interest in who might have killed Miss Kettering. Can you tell me if anyone has been actin’ funny since the murder?”

The moment he asked the question, he wanted to kick himself. What a stupid thing to say. But Taylor seemed to take the inquiry seriously. His forehead wrinkled in thought. “The servants didn’t like her, especially now that poor Mrs. Grant up and died. She was the cook and everyone in the household more or less held Miss Kettering responsible for her death. She wouldn’t send for the doctor when the cook took ill, can you believe it?”

“That’s terrible,” he replied. Cor blimey, he already knew all this. “Uh, was there anyone in particular that seemed to have a grudge against her?”

Taylor took a sip. “Well, that Mrs. Richards didn’t like her much, but she kept a civil tongue in her head.”

“Then how do you know this Mrs. Richards didn’t like her?”

Taylor shrugged. “Because she was always pullin’ faces and rolling her eyes when Miss Kettering wasn’t looking. Last week, I saw her stick her tongue out at Miss Kettering as they were leaving the house. But most people didn’t like Miss Kettering. I can’t say she was my favorite person, either. She made me move out of my nice warm room in the carriage house just because I’m a single man and Mrs. Fox was living upstairs in the flat.” He broke off and snorted. “As if Mrs. Fox would ever look at the likes of me! That woman’s got her nose in the air so high it’s a wonder that bugs don’t fly up her nostrils.”

“Miss Kettering made you move out?”

Taylor nodded. “She was a right religious sort of woman and didn’t think it was proper for a single man to be living on the property where there were single females.” He rolled his eyes. “It was bloomin’ inconvenient. But I didn’t ’ave much choice. Mind you, I thought it was stupid that she made me leave when all and sundry could get into that place whenever they wanted.”

“What do you mean?”

Taylor grimaced. “There were plenty of single men in the Society of the Humble, but she let them have the run of the place. Her cousin comes and goes as he likes and he’s not a married man, and that Mrs. Fox, she’s got a key to the back door. So I ask you now, what was so awful about letting me keep my little room in the carriage house?”

“Doesn’t sound to me like there should have been anything wrong with you stayin’ on the property,” Wiggins replied. He’d no idea what to ask next but he needn’t have worried about it, as Danny Taylor apparently liked the sound of his own voice.

“I’m a decent sort of bloke and it wasn’t as if my family was newcomers to the property. My granddad was the head groundsman there when Mrs. Fox was just a slip of a lass. She lived there as a girl, you know. Three generations of my family has served that household, but once Miss Kettering got the idea that a single man was a walking sin, there was no changin’ her mind and I was told to get out.”

 

Ruth picked up her teacup and took a sip from the elegant china. She surveyed the room, trying to see where her quarry had finally settled. She spotted her sitting in a pink satin corner chair on the far side of the ballroom. Ruth stood up and made her way among the tables toward Evangeline Howard. She was in the home of Rosalind Wilson, a rich, elderly cousin of her late husband, and she rarely accepted the woman’s invitations. Ruth didn’t really care for her very much. Rosalind was overbearing, narrow-minded, and mean to her servants. But Ruth was desperate to help solve this case, because poor Gerald was working so very hard. So she’d accepted the tea invitation in the hopes that she could use the occasion to find out a bit more about their suspects or their victim.

Lady Howard, eighty if she was a day, smiled broadly as she saw Ruth approaching. “Oh, goody, I was hoping you’d come see me. My rheumatism has been bothering me so I couldn’t come to you.” She waved at an empty chair at the nearest table. “Pull that over and sit down so we can have a chat.”

Evangeline Howard was Rosalind Wilson’s opposite in every way. Kind, generous of spirit, and, most importantly, very supportive of women’s rights, she was a delightful companion and Ruth was glad she was here this afternoon.

“Are you still friends with that police detective?” Evangeline asked as Ruth pulled the chair next to her and settled into her seat.

“I am,” she replied.

Evangeline’s eyes widened in pleasure. “Then I must tell you, I know some of the principals in this latest murder. You know, Olive Kettering. The lady who was shot in her own garden. Your inspector got that case, didn’t he? I thought he got all the rich ones.”

“He did,” she replied. “Did you know the victim?”

“I knew her, but not well. She was far too serious a person for my liking.”

“Would you care for anything, madam?” asked a waiter pushing a tea trolley loaded with plates of pastries as he paused by their table.

“I’ll have an éclair and a couple of those petit fours.” Evangeline pointed at what she wanted.

The waiter nodded, loaded up a small china plate, and put it down in front of her. “And you, ma’am? Would you like something?” he asked Ruth.

“An apple tart, please,” she said. “Thank you,” she said as he served her and then moved off to the next table. “Now, you were saying something about Olive Kettering.”

“I was saying she was a very serious person,” Evangeline said. She picked up her fork and cut into her éclair. “By that I meant that she was narrow-minded and perhaps the sourest personality that I’ve ever met. This is odd, really, because both she and Bernadine Fox were once gay and high-spirited young girls.”

“You knew them as girls?” Ruth took a bite of her tart.

“Not well, but we traveled in the same social circles. I was quite a bit older, of course, but I remember that Olive Kettering was once besotted with a young artist. At one point they were engaged, and then all of a sudden it was called off and no one ever knew why.” She shook her head. “But you’re not interested in ancient history, are you? That won’t help your inspector solve the murder.”

“Actually, it does help to find out these things,” Ruth replied. “You’re an intelligent woman, you know that old sins cast long shadows.”

Evangeline laughed in delight. “They most certainly do. Well, if you’re interested in the past, you’ve come to the right place. I also know a bit about Dorian Kettering, Olive’s cousin. They’re as unlike one another as chalk and cheese. He was always a lovely man, the sort of person any mother would want for their daughter, except that his branch of the family hadn’t any money. Olive’s people were the ones that owned the brewery.”

“Dorian’s family had nothing?” Ruth pressed.

Evangeline thought for a moment before she answered. “At one point, I believe they were part owners of the business, but there was some sort of trouble and Dorian’s parents had to sell their shares cheaply in order to hang on to the family farm. I don’t recall the details, it was years ago. Dorian would only have been a child when his family lost their money.”

“Do you remember who benefited from the transaction?” she asked.

“It would have been Olive’s parents; both of them were very shrewd businesspeople and the rumor always was that Olive was equally shrewd. The gossip I heard was that she managed her investments so well she more than doubled what she inherited.”

Ruth nodded thoughtfully. Children were very impressionable, and she wondered if Dorian might have blamed his cousin for what her parents had done to his family. As she’d just said a few moments ago, old sins cast long shadows.

“Of course there was always a strain of madness in that family,” Evangeline mused.

“The Ketterings?” Ruth murmured. “Really? What kind of madness?”

“Oh, not just the Ketterings, the Fox family as well—they’re all related to one another and have been for the last three hundred years or so.” Evangeline laughed again. “Old Campion Fox—that’s Bernadine Fox’s great-grandfather—supposedly kept a servant girl he’d fallen in love with imprisoned in the cellar. She was finally set free when her brothers stormed the house and got her out. Then Esme Fox, Campion’s daughter, fell in love with a young Quaker man and followed him all over England. He had to move to someplace called Pennsylvania in the United States to get away from her. And Bernadine, of course, was supposedly in love with a young man back when she was younger, but the fellow had no money so she was forced to marry one of the distant Fox cousins.” She paused and took a quick sip of her tea. “The Ketterings aren’t much better. The gossip I heard is that before Olive became a religious fanatic she was a bit of a libertine; and Dorian is equally fanatical, only at the other end of the spectrum. Honestly, you’d think people would have better sense than to use God as a weapon against one’s own family. It’s not healthy, I tell you.”

 

Betsy flew through the back door of Upper Edmonton Gardens and skidded to a halt, narrowly missing crashing into Phyllis, who was on her way out. “Watch where you’re going,” she snapped.

“Oh dear, I didn’t hear you come. I’m ever so sorry,” Phyllis cried.

“You shouldn’t be the one apologizing,” Mrs. Jeffries said and stepped out of the dry larder. She’d gone there to get a sugar cone for Mrs. Goodge and she’d seen the whole incident. She’d had enough. It was time to put an end to this nonsense. “Betsy should. She was the one that came running through the back door with no regard to the fact that another person might be in the hallway.”

“Oh, it’s alright, Mrs. Jeffries.” Phyllis laughed nervously and edged toward the door. “I don’t want to make a fuss.”

Betsy merely gaped at the housekeeper, her expression stunned.

“No, it’s not alright,” Mrs. Jeffries retorted. “And expecting common courtesy from others isn’t making a fuss. You have the right to be treated with the same respect as everyone else in the household.”

“I’m sorry, Phyllis,” Betsy stammered. “Mrs. Jeffries is right, I was rude.”

“That’s alright, Betsy.” Phyllis smiled hesitantly.

“I’m fine. Uh, I’ll just be off. I’ll see you both tomorrow.” She gave a quick wave and hurled herself out the back door.

The two women stared at one another for a long moment, both of them more than a bit taken aback by what had just happened. Mrs. Jeffries broke the silence. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you, Betsy, but you were most definitely in the wrong.”

Betsy said nothing; she didn’t trust herself to speak. She knew the housekeeper was right, that she’d behaved horribly, but the reprimand had stung. Tears welled in her eyes and she blinked hard to hold them back. She took a long, ragged breath as the hall suddenly narrowed and darkness swam toward her. She put out her hand to steady herself, but it was too late; her knees crumpled and she fell to one side, landing hard against the wall.

“Betsy, oh, my goodness.” Mrs. Jeffries leapt toward her, grabbing her around the waist before she actually hit the floor. “Betsy, Betsy, are you alright?” Gently she pulled her up and leaned her against the wall. “Oh, my gracious, are you alright? You scared me to death. Stay here while I go get Wiggins and Mrs. Goodge. We’ll carry you into the kitchen.”