The Ghost and Mrs. Jeffries (10 page)

“Now, you see, that’s important. There’s an indication that the household was stingy with food. They probably underfed the servants,” Mrs. Jeffries said, though she wasn’t sure she believed it. However, she didn’t want Betsy to become discouraged. “Who was in charge of the accounts?”

“The housekeeper, Mrs. Trotter. But sometimes Mrs. Hodges would come in and order things too,” Betsy explained. “You’d think that rich people wouldn’t be so
careful with their money, wouldn’t you, seein’ as how they have plenty.”

“That’s how they got rich in the first place,” Mrs. Goodge commented. “By watchin’ their pennies.”

Mrs. Jeffries didn’t think watching one’s pennies had all that much to do with getting rich, but she wasn’t going to pursue the point just now.

“Betsy,” she said thoughtfully, “what else makes you think that Mrs. Hodges was overly careful with her money?”

“The girl at the dress shop did tell me that Mrs. Hodges was always complainin’ about the cost of her clothes. Not that the cost ever stopped her from buyin’, mind you. She even used to complain about the cost of her husband’s clothes.” Betsy shook her head. “Honestly Mrs. Hodges were in there on the day she died to get an evening dress fitted and she spent the whole time bendin’ the poor shop girl’s ear about what a fool of a husband she had.”

Luty snorted. “Women been complainin’ about that fer a long time.”

“What precisely had annoyed Mrs. Hodges?” Mrs. Jeffries asked.

“Oh, you know. He spent too much time at his club and he didn’t pay enough attention to her. He spent too much money and then he didn’t spend enough.” She laughed. “First she moaned about all the money he was spendin’ at his club and then she whined about him buyin’ a readymade coat and bowler from one of them cheap shops down the East End. I tell ya, there’s just no pleasin’ some people.”

Mrs. Jeffries hid her disappointment well. Betsy hadn’t learned anything really useful. She’d picked up a few tidbits of marital gossip, but that was all. “Were you able to learn anything about anyone else in the Hodges household?”

“Not really,” she replied dejectedly. She brightened suddenly. “Exceptin’ I did hear that Mrs. Hodges’s niece just
broke off her engagement a while back. That’s somethin’, isn’t it?”

“Of course it is.” Mrs. Jeffries forced an enthusiastic smile to her lips. She’d have to find a way to break it gently to the girl that she’d already picked up that particular item from the conversation she’d overheard at the Hodges house.

“Addie,” Betsy continued excitedly, “that’s the girl at the dress shop, said that a couple of months ago Felicity Marsden came in an’ canceled an order for some clothes she’d ordered for her trousseau. Addie was right annoyed about it too.”

“Addie didn’t, by any chance, know the name of Felicity’s fiancé did she?” Mrs. Jeffries asked eagerly. Thwarted love was sometimes a motive for murder. And the only name she’d overheard this morning had been Benjamin. A surname would be most useful.

“She didn’t know his name,” Betsy admitted reluctantly. “But she did say that ever since then she ‘adn’t seen hide nor hair of Felicity. But that don’t do us any good. An engagement that ended two months ago isn’t goin’ to ‘elp us find Abigail Hodges’s killer.” She slumped in her chair. “Sorry. I didn’t learn much today, did I?”

“You did fine, Betsy,” Mrs. Jeffries assured her.

“I don’t know. Smythe has probably already tracked down both them cabbies.…”

Mrs. Jeffries pursed her lips. “No, he hasn’t. He popped in early this morning. So far he’s found nothing.”

“Well, one of us better come up with somethin’,” Betsy exclaimed. “I’ve got a feelin’ this case is goin’ to be real difficult.”

Luty Belle reached across the table and patted Betsy’s hand. “It ain’t gonna be any more difficult than any of the other cases. Now stop frettin’, girl. It’s early days yet.”

“It’s a rather sordid story, inspector, and not one that I’d care to repeat.” Esme Popejoy smiled sadly as she
handed Witherspoon his cup of tea. “But I do understand that you’re investigating a terrible crime, and therefore you need to know.”

“Er, actually, all I wanted to know was whether or not Mr. or Mrs. Hodges had mentioned their house being unattended,” Witherspoon sputtered. Really, this interview wasn’t going at all well. He knew he should have taken Barnes’s advice and gone on home, leaving the interviewing of Mrs. Esme Popejoy until tomorrow. But dash it all, he’d wanted to get it over and done with.

“That’s all you wanted to ask me? But surely you don’t believe Mrs. Hodges was killed in a robbery?” Mrs. Popejoy exclaimed. “Surely you can see that she was murdered. You’re not having much success tracing the jewelry, are you?”

Inspector Witherspoon was so startled his hand jerked, slopping tea into his saucer and rattling the cup. “Oh dear,” he groaned. “How on earth do you know that!” He caught himself abruptly, realizing he really shouldn’t be admitting such a thing to one of the principals in this case. “Really, Mrs. Popejoy, I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”

This, his last interview of the day, was turning out to be his worst.

Women like Esme Popejoy made him fidgety. With her delicate features, slim womanly figure, dark auburn hair and lovely blue eyes, she made him nervous. Very nervous indeed. He was never precisely sure how to talk to such creatures. They were so very different from men. When they smiled and laughed and raised their perfectly shaped eyebrows, well, a fellow practically became tongue-tied.

Embarrassed by his thoughts, the inspector quickly looked away and focused his attention on his surroundings. He stared fixedly at the voluminous folds of the elegant blue silk drapes before dropping his eyes to the royal-blue carpet. The settee and other furniture in Mrs. Popejoy’s drawing room was white damask and he was terrified he was going to spill his tea all over the cloth and leave a horrid stain if
that woman didn’t stop staring at him. Drat it all, he really should have let Barnes handle this interview.

“Come now, Inspector,” Esme Popejoy replied. “You needn’t pretend with me.” She leaned forward and looked Witherspoon directly in the eye. “You see, I
know
. I know it wasn’t a simple robbery gone wrong. It was cold-blooded murder.”

“But how could you possibly know such a thing!”

She gave him a slow, wise smile. “You wouldn’t understand,” she said softly. “Men so rarely do. But then again, perhaps you’re not like other men. I’ve heard you’re exceptionally intelligent.”

“Oh, well,” Witherspoon murmured modestly. Perhaps it was just as well that he hadn’t let Barnes interview this lady. Why, talking to her was getting easier by the minute. Gracious, she was such a perceptive woman. He was surprised to find that his nervousness had almost completely gone. “I have had some modest success.…”

“But of course you have,” she agreed, reaching over and patting him gently on the arm. “And it’s because you’re so brilliant, so much more broad-minded than the average person, that I’m willing to speak so openly with you. You see, I know it was murder because Lady Lucia warned Mrs. Hodges.”

“Lady Lucia?” Witherspoon repeated. “Who’s she?” He felt a flutter of apprehension.

“My spirit guide.” Esme gave him another dazzling smile. “She almost didn’t come that evening, you see. I’d told Mrs. Hodges that Lady Lucia really only likes to come at dusk, when one lights the gas lamps, but Abigail was late, so Lady Lucia was, well, annoyed. That’s why the warning was so muddled. She’s generally much clearer than that.”

The inspector felt as if he was losing control of the conversation. He decided to try to tactfully ignore this rather peculiar digression and backtrack. “Er, yes, I’m sure she was annoyed. Now, if you’ll recall, I did ask if Mr. or Mrs. Hodges had mentioned that their home would be empty.
Not only were the servants not home, but their niece was out as well.”

Mrs. Popejoy stared at him for a long moment before answering. Her voice, when she finally replied, was rather cool. “Yes, Inspector, you did. To answer you, Abigail had told me Felicity was out for the evening, but she hadn’t mentioned the servants being gone.”

“I see.”

“Do you?” Mrs. Popejoy raised one perfect eyebrow. “I don’t think so. You see, Abigail was rather concerned about Felicity. She didn’t trust the girl. That’s what I was trying to tell you earlier, but you insisted upon digressing.”

Witherspoon would have liked to have told Mrs. Popejoy that he wasn’t the one who’d digressed, she was. But naturally one didn’t like to contradict a lady. “I’m dreadfully sorry,” he murmured. “Please do go on.”

He might as well listen. Not that he thought for a moment that Mrs. Popejoy had anything but gossip to tell him. And as for her assertion that Mrs. Hodges was murdered and that the robbery wasn’t real, well, that was sheer dramatics on the woman’s part.

“As I said before,” she began, “it’s rather sordid. Felicity Marsden got herself engaged. But her fiancé was most unsuitable. He was a fortune hunter by the name of Benjamin Vogel. A nobody. Abigail loathed the man. But as Felicity was of age and threatened to elope, she knew there was nothing she could do about it. Abigail finally decided to pay Vogel off, and the dreadful creature took the money and broke his engagement to Felicity.” Mrs. Popejoy laughed harshly. “But do you think the girl was grateful? No, she blamed her poor aunt for Vogel’s disgusting character. Abigail was beside herself. She confided in me. Told me how worried she was, how desperate she was to have her niece love her again. That’s one of the reasons she wanted to come to me on the night she was killed. She was going to ask Lady Lucia for advice. But as I told you, she got a warning instead. And the warning, though it was muddled
and unclear at the time, has become very clear to me now. Lady Lucia was warning her to be careful of her niece.”

“Did Lady Lucia actually say that?” Witherspoon asked before he realized how ridiculous the question sounded.

“Not in so many words,” Mrs. Popejoy stated. “But Abigail had just asked her a question about Felicity’s future and Lady Lucia’s only answer was to tell Abigail she was surrounded by darkness, death and despair.”

“But that could mean anything.”

“Only to those who don’t understand,” Mrs. Popejoy cried passionately. “Don’t you see? Sometimes the veil between the flesh and the spirit is so strong we only receive part of their message. But I know Lady Lucia. She was warning Abigail Hodges to be careful of her niece.”

“Really, Mrs. Popejoy,” the inspector warned, “you mustn’t say such things. We’ve accounted for Miss Marsden’s whereabouts on the night of the…er, robbery and she couldn’t possibly have done it. Furthermore, where would a young woman like that get hold of a firearm?”

“From her former fiancé, Benjamin Vogel. He had a gun. Why don’t you ask him what he was doing that night!”

Mrs. Jeffries glanced at the clock and then back at the impatient faces sitting around the kitchen table. They were waiting for Betsy and Luty Belle. Smythe was glaring at the floor, Mrs. Goodge was nursing a last cup of cocoa and Wiggins was yawning.

The inspector had finally gone to bed. He’d come home in an awful state and Mrs. Jeffries had spent the evening listening to him recount every detail of his day. She’d learned quite a bit. Now they seemed to have several suspects. Why, even the inspector was almost convinced that the robbery hadn’t been genuine, though he’d been loath to admit it at first.

“Cor, what’s takin’ ’em so bloomin’ long?” Smythe snarled as he scowled at the clock for the twentieth time.
“Don’t that silly girl realize we’ve all got a lot to do tomorrow? We can’t hang about all night waitin’ for her to get herself home.”

“It’s not that late,” Wiggins soothed.

Just then they heard the rumble of carriage wheels and the clip-clops of horses’ hooves as Luty Belle’s coach pulled up at the front door. As Betsy had her own key, it took only a few moments before the two excited women came hurrying into the kitchen.

“It’s about time,” Smythe said.

“Land’s sake,” Luty exclaimed as she sank into the chair next to Mrs. Jeffries, “what a folderol. I tell ya, tonight was better than a Barbary Coast saloon on payday. Yes indeedy…that woman puts on quite a show.”

“I take it you’re referring to your evening with Madame Natalia.” Mrs. Jeffries smiled, delighted to see that her friends had enjoyed themselves.

“It were ever so excitin’.” Betsy giggled. “‘Course no one would believe it for a moment. There were six of us, countin’ Luty Belle and Edmund and me. We all sat around this tiny little table and held hands. Madame Natalia went into a trance, sort of like bein’ asleep only you’re really awake, and then she called up her guide. His name was Soaring Eagle.”

Luty snorted. “Soaring Eagle, stupid name. Knew a few Indians, none of ’em had names that silly.”

“Well, go on,” Wiggins said eagerly. “What happened then?”

Betsy giggled again. “Everyone started askin’ questions—some of them were really funny too. That Mrs. Parnell, she were there with her husband, she wanted to know what cemetery she ought to be buried in.”

“Yes, well, I’m delighted to see it was so entertaining for you,” Mrs. Jeffries began.