Shrouded In Thought (Gilded Age Mysteries Book 2) (27 page)

Chapter 25—Manufacturing Evidence

“Mr. Sparrow! Mr. Sparrow, wake up. We need your help!”

“Wha... who...?” The old man snorted a few times and sat up in his chair. He squinted in the dim lantern light, trying to make out the face that had invaded his sleep and his guard shack. “Who’s that? Do I know you?”

“We’ve met before. The name’s Simpson. Freddie Simpson. I’m a reporter for the Gazette, and I spoke to you the day Nora Johnson was drowned. You remember me, don’t you?”

The old man adjusted his spectacles and stared at Freddie for several seconds. “Oh... oh, yes. That’s right. I do remember. You interrupted my nap that day.”

“Yes, well...” Freddie apologized self-consciously. “I seem to be making a habit of that. Very sorry to wake you again.”

“Wake me!” The old man was indignant. “I wasn’t asleep. Just resting my eyes, that’s all. Taking a short break before my next rounds at nine o’clock.”

“It’s past that, Mr. Sparrow.” The young man’s tone was meek. “It’s around nine-fifteen.”

“It is?” The watchman sprang out of his chair and grabbed his lantern. “Out of my way, boy. I’ve got work to do.”

“Just a minute, Mr. Sparrow.” Freddie clutched at his coat sleeve. “My friends and I, we need your help.”

“What friends? What help?”

“Oh, sorry.” Freddie stepped aside from the door of the shack to reveal two other figures standing behind him. “Let me introduce my friend, Miss Evangeline LeClair, and her servant Jack.”

“Ma’am.” Sparrow tipped his cap to Evangeline and nodded to the colossus standing next to her.

“We need to speak to Mr. Allworthy,” Freddie explained. “We went to his home, but his butler said he’d come to the factory a few hours ago and was probably still here. It’s an urgent matter.”

“Urgent? I don’t know what all can be so urgent after nine p.m. on a Friday night, but I’ll take you to him anyhow. He should still be in the factory.”

Sparrow picked up his lantern and motioned the small party to follow him. “I think he’s talking to Mr. Bayne.”

“Mr. Bayne’s here as well?” Evangeline asked. “How convenient.”

“Oh, Mr. Allworthy, sir? Are you in here?” The watchman called out tentatively as he opened the door to the factory workshop. “Can’t understand why he just didn’t turn on the power.” He flipped the main electric switch. Every shadow retreated from the glare of the incandescent bulbs.

“What in the name of...” Sparrow trailed off in amazement at the sight that greeted them.

“Something’s happened,” Evangeline said tensely.

“Has it ever,” Freddie added.

At the opposite end of the room the group beheld a twisted metal spiral that had pulled away from a platform some fifteen feet above them.

They advanced to the middle of the room, and their first shocking sight was quickly succeeded by another.

“Oh, Good God!” Evangeline cried. “Is he—”

Freddie and Jack rushed forward to the crumpled shape lying in a pool of blood on the shop floor, directly below the metal spiral. Jack turned the body over and tried vainly to find a pulse.

“I’m afraid he is, Miss Engie.”

“Oh, dear me!” Thaddeus Sparrow exclaimed. “Oh, dear me! Another accident.”

“I don’t think it was any accident, Mr. Sparrow.” Evangeline studied the dead man’s face. “I think you should call the police. Freddie, Jack, don’t touch anything until they get here!”

“But what will Mr. Allworthy say?” the guard asked plaintively. “We should wait for Mr. Allworthy. He must still be around here somewhere.”

Evangeline evidently took note of the watchman’s distress. Her reply was gentle. “Mr. Allworthy may not be coming back, Mr. Sparrow. If I were you, I’d call the police right away.” She glanced quickly at her servant. “Jack, I think you’d better go with him and help him make the call.”

“Right, Miss Engie.” Taking charge of the situation, Jack led the old man to the door. “Why don’t you and me go find a telephone, Mr. Sparrow.”

The night watchman nodded passively and the pair left the shop floor.

Freddie waited until they were out of earshot before giving vent to his feelings. “Well, of all the rotten luck!”

Evangeline sighed. She looked at Desmond Bayne’s lifeless body lying on the floor in front of her, his features somewhat flattened by the fall.

“I think you should turn the body over as we found it, Freddie. We wouldn’t want to be accused of tampering with police evidence.”

The young man nodded and complied.

“I suppose it was inevitable that Martin would try to rid himself of Bayne sooner or later, but the timing couldn’t have been worse. Our key witness dead, our murderer flown, and no confession likely from either one to clear Serafina.” Evangeline walked over and sat down on the bottom stair that led up to the catwalk, her chin sunk in her hands. “I guess it was bad luck to celebrate too early and on Friday the thirteenth, no less!”

Freddie sat down beside her. “Not to mention the fact that I’ve just lost the story of the century!”

The two remained silent for several moments, sunk in gloomy contemplation.

Finally, albeit somewhat listlessly, Evangeline stood up and dusted off her skirt. “As long as we’re here, we might as well see what there is to be seen before the police start tramping around.” Evidently knowing the reaction she was about to evoke by her next words, she braced herself for a torrent of gloating. “If you’d be good enough to jot down some notes on whatever we discover.”

To his credit, Freddie only crowed for a modest three minutes before triumphantly opening his notebook.

Ignoring his exuberant display and numerous I-told-you-so’s as best she could, Evangeline forged ahead with her investigation. “I suppose we ought to begin at the beginning, that is, right where we’re standing.” She walked over toward Bayne’s prone body, then looked up toward the catwalk and pointed. “He must have fallen through the railing right about here.”

Freddie scribbled furiously.

Evangeline circled the body for a few moments. “None of his clothes seem to be torn. I doubt that there was a struggle which means Martin didn’t try to pitch him over the railing.”

“As if he could have managed that,” Freddie snorted, still writing.

His companion advanced to the twisted railing, hanging above them. “This has certainly been bent out of shape. He must have struck it with considerable force or else...”

Freddie looked up questioningly from his notes.

“Or else he was hanging off of it before he fell. There’s no other way to explain why the railing looks as it does. Bent back like the lid of a sardine tin.”

Freddie made scrupulous note of the shape of the railing. When he looked up again, his friend had walked off toward the stairs that led to the catwalk. He rushed up to intercept her. “Are you sure those are safe?”

Evangeline jumped up and down on the first few stairs to test them. “It feels solid enough.” She climbed to the top.

Freddie followed several steps behind, cautious not to add too much weight to the stairs, just in case.

“Well, well, what do we have here!” Evangeline advanced across the length of the catwalk. She swooped down to pick up an object which she held up proudly for Freddie’s inspection.

“It’s just a hex nut!” he said flatly.

“Just a hex nut,” the lady echoed, the faintest tone of despair in her voice. “That isn’t the point, Freddie! What’s it doing here?”

The young man was taken aback by her tone. “Why, anyone could have dropped it.”

Before he knew what she was up to, Evangeline had dropped down flat on the catwalk and was endeavoring to stick her head through the railing, craning her neck for a better view of the underside of the guard rail that was still bolted to the platform.

“What in God’s name are you doing now?” Freddie stood aghast at her unconventional posture.

“Aha!” She pulled her head back through the railing, having a care to keep a firm grip on her hat as she did so. “Just as I thought!”

“Yes?” Freddie waited expectantly, pencil raised to record her revelations.

“The bolt I found lying on the platform is the same as the ones that secure the railing to the catwalk.”

Pencil still raised, the young man did not think her comment worthy of inclusion in his narrative. “So?”

“God in heaven, Freddie! How can you be so thick?”

Offended by her tone of voice, the young man attempted to defend himself. “Well, obviously, the bolt must have popped loose when the railing pulled away.”

Evangeline made a superhuman effort to control her temper. “Then why isn’t it lying on the shop floor down below? It’s secured from underneath the platform, not on top, and there is such a thing as gravity. Unless of course you’d care to argue that the bolt did a back flip and ricocheted off the wall before it came to rest up here.”

Freddie grudgingly conceded the point, and without making further reply, recorded her observation. Evangeline whisked past him and ran down the stairs like a prize retriever on the trail of a downed pheasant.

“Just have a look at this!” She held up a tiny metal object in her hand for him to see.”

“Engie, my eyes aren’t that good. I can’t tell from fifteen feet up in the air what you’re holding. What is it?”

“It’s another hex nut. I can see a few others scattered around the floor down here...” She paused, then added significantly, “Where they ought to be.”

The young reporter included her latest finding without dispute or contradiction.

Carefully placing the bolt back on the floor where she’d found it, Evangeline was up the stairs again. She breezed past Freddie and began eagerly sniffing out clues at the far end of the catwalk. “Well, well! This gets better and better. Freddie, come here.” She gestured excitedly for him to join her.

When he arrived, he found her staring down at a wrench lying on the floor. No other tools were in sight.

“Someone might have dropped it?” he ventured weakly.

“My foot!” she shot back contemptuously. “Martin deliberately loosened this railing to make it look like an accident. When Bayne got here, he probably pushed him against the railing. It would have taken very little to make him tumble over the edge.”

“But why go to all the trouble of making it look like an accident and then leave clues scattered about that suggest it wasn’t?”

Freddie braced himself in anticipation of another cutting reply. Instead, Evangeline stared at her companion with a pleased smile on her face. “Why, Frederick Ulysses Simpson, that’s the first rational statement you’ve uttered since we got here.”

“I’m sure there was more than one.” Freddie felt miffed by the back-handed nature of the compliment, but he was relieved not to have been rebuked again.

“You’re quite right, of course.” Evangeline tapped her chin and paced about the catwalk. “Perhaps Bayne arrived sooner than Martin anticipated and he didn’t have time to finish the job properly. After the deed was done, he wanted to get away from the scene of the crime as quickly as he could. I fear he’s on a train out of state by now.” The lady sighed.

“Well, if it’s any comfort, at least he left enough evidence behind to suggest that this was no accident.”

“Yes, quite true.” Evangeline placed the first hex nut she’d found back in the spot where she had discovered it.

“Do you notice anything else?” Freddie asked hopefully, reviewing his notes.

Evangeline scanned the platform and the shop floor below. “No, that’s all that leaps to mind. I’ll have to think about this for a while to make all the pieces fit, but at least I think we know what all the pieces are.”

Freddie was reviewing his jottings one last time when they heard the outer door to the shop scrape open and the sound of several voices invade the factory.

Thaddeus Sparrow and Jack had returned with three blue-coated policemen in tow.

“Has anything been touched?” the tallest policeman demanded of Sparrow as they entered.

“No, I don’t think so. That is, I didn’t...” The watchman looked hesitantly toward the platform where Evangeline and Freddie were standing.

“You there! Who are you?” the cop barked across the room at Freddie.

At the sound of his voice, Evangeline looked guilty enough to mistaken for a murderer herself.

While the cop in charge advanced in their direction, Evangeline threw a nervous glance toward Freddie. She was obviously shocked to see that her friend had actually begun to smile.

 
“Oh, hello, sergeant,” Freddie greeted the man in blue casually. “I didn’t know you worked the night shift.”

“Who’s that up there? Do I know you?” The officer squinted up for a better look.

Freddie flipped back to the early pages of his notes, mumbling to himself as he read over page after page. “Just a moment, I’ve almost got it. Yes, here it is. Your name’s O’Rourke, isn’t it?”

The cop advanced a few more paces for a better look. “The same. How do you know that, mister?”

Freddie leaned over the railing. “I’m Freddie Simpson. The reporter for the Gazette. I spoke to you the day Nora Johnson was drowned here.”