Mrs. Jeffries & the Yuletide Weddings (15 page)

“We planned to go out to Reading and visit my grandmother,” Leo said. “She’ll be ever so pleased to see us.”

“I hope you don’t mind,” Norah added. “Leo and I thought you’d have a lot to do to get ready for the wedding and that you wouldn’t mind if we nipped off to see his family. His gran’s so old she’d never be able to come to Canada and see us, even if we could afford it.”

“Of course I don’t mind.” Betsy felt petty. “And please invite her to the wedding.”

Norah gave her a quick frown. “I wasn’t hinting.”

“I know that.” Betsy stood up. She’d forgotten how easily Norah took offense. “But I’m sure that Leo would like to spend as much time with his family as he can. Besides, there’s going to be a wonderful luncheon, music, and even a bit of dancing. His gran might enjoy herself, so she’s more than welcome.”

“That’s kind of you.” Leo rose to his feet. “But I’ve no idea whether or not she’d be up to that sort of an outing. I’ll see how she looks, and if she’s able, I’ll ask her to come.”

“That’ll be fine.” Betsy glanced at Norah and knew that Leo was going to hear it as soon as the two of them were alone. Betsy would recognize that expression on her sister’s face no matter how many years they’d been apart. Her eyes had narrowed and her mouth flattened into a thin, angry slash of a line. Norah was fit to be tied. “Oh dear, I’d no idea it was getting so late, I must get back. As Norah said, there’s a lot to do before the wedding. Will you be back early this evening or shall I drop back in tomorrow morning?” She loved Norah, but spending too much time with her was trying. Perhaps they’d been apart for too long or she’d forgotten what a right little madam Norah could be.

“I’d like to have supper with Gran,” Leo said. “But I don’t want to upset your plans—”

Norah interrupted with a quick wave of her hand. “Don’t worry about that, Betsy’ll not mind. After all, you’ve a right to see your family, too. Just because her fiancé paid for us to come—”

Betsy interrupted this time. “Of course I don’t mind. The two of you can do whatever you like.”

“Norah didn’t mean to . . .” Leo started.

“You don’t have to explain me.” Norah glared at him.

“Good, glad that’s settled.” Betsy hurried to the coat tree and grabbed her hat and cloak. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then. Have a wonderful time today, and don’t forget to invite your gran,” she called as she closed the door behind her and hurried down the narrow staircase. She wasn’t certain, but by the time she’d hit the bottom step, she thought she could hear Norah’s raised voice.

She grinned to herself as she stepped outside. Maybe she shouldn’t have left Leo alone to face her sister’s tongue. Then she shrugged and started off. After all these years, Leo ought to be used to her sister.

 

Arabella Evans stared stonily at the inspector. They were in her drawing room, and she was sitting on the sofa. He was standing in front of her. She didn’t invite him to take a seat.

“I don’t know why you’ve returned.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “As I told you before, we’ve had nothing to do with Agatha Moran for years.”

Witherspoon sighed inwardly. He’d been in such good spirits when he left the house today. “I’m sorry to intrude upon you, madam, but this is a murder investigation and I do have more questions. I’ve asked Constable Barnes to have a word with your staff. I hope you don’t mind.”

“You mean the servants? Are you joking? That’s most inconvenient, Inspector.” She uncrossed her arms and straightened her spine. “We’re having a luncheon today with some very important people. Everything must be perfect. I’ll not have you keeping my servants from their duties.”

“If that is your wish, madam,” he replied with a slight incline of his head, “I’ll ask them to come to the station. I can take their statements there.” Generally, Inspector Witherspoon tried to be as accommodating as possible, but he was a bit annoyed. After hearing what Jane Middleton had to say, the inspector was sure that both Mr. and Mrs. Evans had been less than truthful about their relationship with the dead woman.

She looked at him in disbelief. “Are you serious? You do understand that all it would take is a word or two from my daughter’s fiancé, and your life could be made most uncomfortable.”

Witherspoon hated it when people tried to bully him with threats. It was such a foolish waste of his time, and it clearly illustrated their character. “Mrs. Evans, your future son-in-law may do whatever he likes. By all means tell Sir Madison that my superior officer is Chief Inspector Barrows at Scotland Yard. But in the interim, I will get statements from your servants. Agatha Moran, a woman who was connected with this household, was murdered right outside of your front door. Frankly, not only have you and your husband behaved in a very odd manner, but we’ve statements from other witnesses that lead us to believe you haven’t told us everything you know.”

Arabella’s jaw dropped. She stared at him for a moment and then sagged back against the cushions of the settee. “Ask your questions and get out of here.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said. He didn’t like being annoyed. It made for very bad police work. “Now let me ask this again. Have you had any recent contact with Agatha Moran?”

“What do you mean by recent?”

“Anytime this past year, including this past week?” he asked.

She looked away. “I’ve seen her once.”

“Yet when I asked you that before, you insisted you’d had nothing to do with the woman since she left your employment?” He let the question hang in the air to avoid calling her a liar.

“For God’s sake, Inspector, she’d just been murdered only a few feet from my front door.” She looked at him contemptuously. “What sane person wouldn’t have done the same? Of course I lied and said I’d not seen her.”

“When, exactly, did you see her?” He kept his tone calm and deliberate. Arabella Evans was irritating, but not any more than many women of her class.

“A few days ago, I received a note from her.”

“How did the note arrive? By post or by hand?”

“It came in the second morning post,” she replied. “I read it and sent a reply by the afternoon post.”

“The one o’clock or the three o’clock post?” Witherspoon did some quick calculating in his head. If she replied by the earlier one o’clock post, Agatha Moran would have received the note by that same afternoon.

“The one o’clock.”

“What did the note say?” he asked.

“She wanted to see me, Inspector. I should have thought that was obvious.” Her tone was clipped.

“Did you invite her here?”

Arabella waved her hand in a negative gesture. “Of course not, I told her to meet me in town. I had an appointment with my dressmaker the following day. I instructed her to meet me at Lyon’s Tea Shop on Oxford Street.”

“You met her there? Is that correct?”

Arabella smiled wryly. “Of course, Inspector. There was no reason not to meet with her, but I didn’t have a lot of time to spare that day. We had a quick cup of tea together. It was a very amicable meeting.”

“What did she want to see you about?” Witherspoon asked.

“She said she’d heard Rosemary was to marry and she had some family silver she wanted to give to her as a wedding gift.”

“She wanted to give your daughter her family heirlooms?” the inspector repeated, his expression skeptical.

“They were hardly heirlooms,” Arabella explained. “When we employed her, she had a few trinkets that she kept in her room. Rosemary used to love playing with them. Miss Moran thought Rosemary would enjoy them as a gift. They hardly have any real monetary value.”

“So the gifts were sentimental in nature,” he clarified.

“That’s correct. I told her to send them along to the house, and then I excused myself and went to the dressmaker.”

“What time did you and Miss Moran meet at the tearoom?” He shifted on his feet as his bad leg began to tire and made a mental note to send a constable to the tearoom. Hopefully one of the staff would recall serving the two women. He wanted to verify Arabella Evans’ account of the meeting; she had already misled him once and he was determined she’d not do it again. She was a rather irritating woman.

“I instructed her to meet me at ten forty-five,” she informed him. “Miss Moran was prompt. But then, I’d expect nothing less of her. She was always very good at keeping a schedule. She instilled a number of very good habits in Rosemary.”

“And afterwards you went right to the dressmaker’s?” He moved his weight again as his knee began to throb.

“I’ve just told you that.” She sighed impatiently. “Now look, I really must attend to my household—”

He interrupted, “I’ll need the name and address of your dressmaker. Did you walk there or did you take a hansom?”

She glared at him. “As it was just around the corner, I walked. The dressmaker’s name is Madame Corbier and her shop is on—”

“I know the establishment,” he said, cutting her off again.

He wasn’t generally so rude, but he was in a great deal of pain and could feel his knee starting to swell. He’d not seen Lady Cannonberry in over a week now, and he was nervous about Betsy’s wedding. He was walking her down the aisle, and it was his duty to insure her nuptials went off perfectly. He had a horrible feeling that uncooperative and untruthful witnesses like Arabella Evans weren’t going to help him get this case solved before Betsy’s big day.

Downstairs, Constable Barnes wasn’t having an easy time of it, either. “Let’s try this again, ma’am.” He sighed. “What time did the guests start arriving for the tea party?”

Mrs. Grayston, the housekeeper, stared at him as if he were a half-wit. “And I’ve already told you, I was in the kitchen so I’ve no idea when the first one got here. But it was probably close to four thirty.”

Barnes decided that would have to do. He really wasn’t interested in any of the guests; the reports from the constables indicated that to date, none of them were acquainted with the victim. He’d hoped to use the timeline of the arrival of the first guest to get some idea of where each of the individual family members might have been between the start of the tea party and the murder. He tried another tactic. “Who greeted the guests when they arrived?”

“I suppose Mrs. Evans and Miss Evans greeted their guests.”

“But you don’t know that for a fact,” he pressed.

“I’ve just told you, I was in the kitchen checking on the petit fours. Cook has had some trouble lately with her baking and I wanted to make sure they were acceptable. By the time I got back upstairs, Stevens was at the front door and guests were arriving. I’ve no idea who got here first.”

“Was Mrs. or Miss Evans in the drawing room when you came upstairs?” he asked.

“Where else would they be . . .” Her voice trailed off. “Oh dear, I’ve made a mistake. Come to think of it, Mrs. Evans wasn’t there. But some of the guests had already arrived. I remember now, because I overheard Miss Evans telling Lady Warburton that her mother would be right back and to please make herself comfortable.”

“Do you know where Mrs. Evans had gone?”

“I’ve no idea. But I saw her coming back into the drawing room a bit later.”

“You saw her coming down the stairs,” he probed. Ye gods, getting information out of this woman was harder than pulling hens’ teeth.

“I didn’t say that, did I. I saw her coming in from the conservatory.” She jerked her thumb up. As they were downstairs in the butler’s pantry, the constable assumed she was pointing at the conservatory.

“The conservatory?” he repeated.

“That’s right.” Some of her bluster had faded. “I assume she’d gone there to check on something. We’ve had workmen in for the past month and the wretched room still isn’t finished. Mrs. Evans wanted it done by this week. She’d planned to host a champagne breakfast there the day before the wedding.”

He raised his bushy eyebrows in disbelief. “So she left a social occasion to go and check on how the work was progressing.”

“Don’t be daft.” The housekeeper snorted derisively. “Mrs. Evans wouldn’t do such a silly thing. She probably went to make sure the workmen had put up oilcloths to keep the wet out. There’s some very expensive furniture in there now, and I imagine she wanted to be certain her new Spanish table wasn’t going to be ruined by the rain coming in on it.”

Barnes winced. He’d only done a cursory search of the premises and felt foolish now. He should have gone into the conservatory instead of just glancing at the front from the street.

“Like I said,” the housekeeper continued, “the wretched place still isn’t finished, so Mrs. Evans will not likely be hosting anything there till well after the New Year. The builders have mucked up the job and there isn’t even glass in half the frames. Add to it, Mr. Evans wasn’t home like he was supposed to be, so he couldn’t take care of the problem. I imagine she went to make sure they’d done what she told them. It was very cold and she did have guests coming.”

Barnes suddenly went still. He couldn’t believe he’d been so derelict in his duty. Blast, why had he relied on the lads to search the house? None of their reports had mentioned oilcloths or open windows. “Were the empty frames at ground level?”

She shrugged. “How should I know? I don’t go in there. The workmen are rude. Now, if you’re finished, I’ve a lot of work to do.”

He wasn’t finished at all, but he wasn’t going to waste any more time on questioning her. There had to be other servants who would be more helpful. He looked down at the list of names the butler had given him and selected the next one. “Could you send the downstairs maid to see me, please.”

She gave him a curt nod. “Mind you don’t keep her long. We’ve a lot to do before the guests get here today.”