The Ghost and Mrs. Jeffries (6 page)

“You know,” Betsy said thoughtfully, “Edmund may be able to help there.”

“Oh, it’s Edmund now, is it?” Smythe said sarcastically.

Betsy glared at the coachman and Mrs. Jeffries quickly raised a hand, effectively silencing them before they could start to bicker.

“Mr. Kessler probably could help,” she said to the maid, “but please be careful about how you ask. As you all realize, it’s imperative we keep any knowledge of our activities about the inspector’s cases confined to a few trusted individuals.”

“What else do you want me to do, then?” Betsy asked eagerly.

“Start with the shopkeepers around Queens Road,” Mrs. Jeffries said. “Do the usual, find out everything you can about Mr. and Mrs. Hodges and Felicity Marsden. Keep on the alert for any interesting gossip concerning anyone in the Hodges household.”

“What about me?” Wiggins asked grudgingly, his tone less than enthusiastic. Another murder meant that his courting time would be seriously limited. And just when he was makin’ some progress with Sarah too. Cor, he thought, it just in’t fair.

Mrs. Jeffries patted his arm. “It’s good of you to ask. Believe me, Wiggins, we all must make sacrifices in the interests of justice. I want you to try to make contact with the footman from the Hodges household. The inspector said young Peter has been in service there for several years. He’ll probably know many useful things about the Hodgeses. Try to find him. See if you can loosen his tongue a bit.” She sat back in her chair. “Also, keep in mind that the inspector said that Mr. Hodges appeared to be a good deal younger than his wife.”

Mrs. Goodge snorted. “Hmmph, he’s probably married her for her money, then.”

“That’s rather a cynical attitude,” Mrs. Jeffries said. “But possibly true. Inspector Witherspoon didn’t actually say so, but I got the impression that it’s Mrs. Hodges who had the money and not Mr. Hodges. Additionally—and getting this tidbit out of the inspector took some doing, believe me—I also got the impression that Mrs. Hodges wasn’t a particularly attractive woman either in appearance or character.”

“Is there anythin’ else?” Betsy stifled a yawn.

“Let me see.” Mrs. Jeffries frowned thoughtfully. She’d given them all the information she’d gotten out of the inspector at dinner. It wasn’t much in the way of facts, but it was a start.

She lifted her chin until she met Smythe’s gaze. But before she could give him any instructions, he rose to his feet and gave them all a cheeky grin. “No need to tell me, Mrs. J, I’m on me way. Lots of good pubs ‘round the Queens Road. I should be able to come up with somethin’ for ya by tomorrow mornin’.”

“Tomorrow mornin’,” Betsy yelped. “That’s not fair, I can’t even get to them shopkeepers till half past nine.”

“What are you carpin’ about?” Mrs. Goodge snapped. “We’re not gettin’ any deliveries tomorrow at all. I’ll have to sit at the back window all day and snatch whoever walks by before I can start askin’ my questions.”

Mrs. Goodge was the only one of the household who managed to obtain her information without even leaving the kitchen.

The cook had a well-developed network of delivery people, rag-and-bone men, chimney sweeps, washerwomen, and tramps whom she regularly paraded through the Witherspoon kitchen. With this ragtag band, whom she fed and plied with dozens of cups of hot tea, she obtained every single morsel of gossip about everyone of importance in London.

“Now, now, this isn’t a competition,” Mrs. Jeffries interjected. Really, a bit of healthy competitiveness was fine, but they were beginning to carry things a bit far. “Remember why we’re doing this. It’s to help the inspector.” And also because they were all born snoops. Solving murders was far more exciting than counting bed linen and polishing silver.

“We’re not forgettin’ the inspector,” Betsy said, her expression sober. “We all owe ‘im too much.”

Immediately Mrs. Jeffries’s annoyance faded as she looked at the somber expressions surrounding her. She knew that despite their natural love for detecting, the real reason they all worked so hard on the inspector’s cases was because they all wanted to. It was a way of paying him back, without his knowledge, of course, for what he’d done for each and every one of them.

Betsy had been a half-starved waif on the inspector’s doorstep when he hired her. Wiggins and Smythe had both worked for the inspector’s late aunt Euphemia. But Wiggins was no more trained as a real footman than a dancing bear and the inspector needed a coachman and horses about as much as he needed a hole in his head. But rather than toss them both out onto the street to fend for themselves as best they could, he’d kept them on. And her. She sighed deeply.

Mrs. Jeffries knew that she’d been in need of a brood to mother and an outlet for her own intellectual curiosity when he’d hired her as his housekeeper. When she’d realized that he could and did need someone to talk his cases over with, she’d been so delighted she’d almost convinced herself that fate had deliberately brought the two of them together. The only fly in the ointment, as far as she could tell, was that Inspector Witherspoon wasn’t married. She knew the dear man was lonely. He was also notoriously shy—why, one could almost call him backward—with the fair sex. But Mrs. Jeffries wasn’t giving up. She knew that with a bit of help and a few gentle nudges, she could eventually find her inspector just the right woman.

Betsy’s voice broke into her thoughts.

“But it in’n fair that ‘e”—the maid pointed at the grinning coachman—“should get such a ‘ead start.”

Mrs. Jeffries noticed that Betsy was so annoyed she was dropping her
hs
again.

“Smythe is not getting a head start,” she repeated firmly. “It’s merely that it is easier for him to pursue his inquiries at night than it is during the day.…” Her voice trailed off as she suddenly remembered something else the inspector had told her. She turned from Betsy to look at the coachman. “Smythe, Mrs. Hodges was sent home in a hansom, and from what the inspector said, Mr. Hodges and Mrs. Popejoy took a hansom to the train station as well. It might be a good idea to try to track the drivers down.”

Smythe’s cocky grin faded. He’d much rather hang about in pubs than pound the streets looking for cabdrivers. “Bloomin’ Ada, Mrs. J. That’s a tall order. Remember the last time you ‘ad me trackin’ down cabdrivers? It might take days.”

“I remember the last time quite well,” she replied calmly. “And if you’ll recall, we learned a substantial amount of information about that case from all your hard work.” She smiled softly. “I know it’s asking a lot. But I really think it might be useful.”

“All right,” he said, his tone filled with grudging respect. “Where does this Mrs. Popejoy live? I might as well start checkin’ the cabbies in that area first. And what station was she leavin’ from?”

“Number seven, Edinger Place. It’s less than half a mile from the Strand. The inspector hasn’t been there yet. He was merely repeating what Constable Barnes had found out. Mrs. Popejoy’s friend lives in Southend—”

“Southend!” Smythe yelped. “Blimey, that’s the T and S Line. Them stations is clear over to the East End. It’ll take me ‘alf the night to track down that cabbie.”

“Yes, I know it’s inconvenient, but the sooner we get started, the sooner we’ll have some real facts to sink our teeth into.”

“Is this Mrs. Popejoy still in Southend?” Mrs. Goodge asked.

“As far as I know,” Mrs. Jeffries replied. “Inspector Witherspoon is planning on speaking with the lady tomorrow afternoon.”

“Why not tomorrow morning?” Smythe asked, his dark eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

“Tomorrow morning is the inquest. The inspector says he wants to hear Mrs. Popejoy’s evidence at the inquest before he questions her.”

“What did you think of Mrs. Popejoy, sir?” Constable Barnes asked as he and the inspector hurried down Camden Street to the Hodges house. “Not one for hidin’ her light under a bushel, is she?”

“No,” the inspector agreed, “she isn’t.” He was only half listening to the constable. His mind was preoccupied with other matters.

They’d just come from the inquest. Witherspoon knew he should be feeling far happier than he was. The ruling had been as expected. Mrs. Abigail Hodges had been murdered. Dr. Potter’s evidence along with the evidence of the burglary left no doubt that the death had occurred during the commission of a crime.

Well, obviously, the woman was killed during a robbery, the inspector told himself sternly as they approached the victim’s house. Everything pointed to that. He absolutely refused to allow himself to be sidetracked into thinking this crime was a complicated murder plot when everything, including the coroner’s inquest, clearly showed it to be a simple robbery with very tragic results.

Yet despite his resolve, he couldn’t quite shake the suspicion that there might be more to this case than he’d first anticipated.

He kept remembering his housekeeper’s comments. “Housebreakers rarely go armed,” she’d said. And then she’d pointed out the matter of the bedroom door being closed and why didn’t the thieves simply slip out the front door. Witherspoon sighed. Something else was bothering him as well, something Constable Barnes had mentioned yesterday when they’d been examining the broken window in the Hodges kitchen. The window the thief or thieves had used to gain entry to the house.

The inspector came to a dead stop and turned to face Barnes. “What did you say about all that glass yesterday?”

The constable’s craggy face went blank for a moment and then cleared. “You mean the broken window in the kitchen?”

The inspector nodded.

“All I said was the glass fragments looked a mite peculiar.”

“I remember that,” Witherspoon said earnestly, “but we were interrupted and I never got a chance to ask you what you meant by that remark. How did it look peculiar?”

“The glass was on the wrong side,” Barnes explained. “If the window had been broken from the outside, then most of the glass pieces should have been on the kitchen floor. The force of the blow, so to speak. But I happened to notice there were more glass on the outside of the house than on the kitchen floor. The ground outside the window was covered with fragments.” He smiled self-consciously.

“Then you’re suggesting that the window was broken from the inside of the house and not the outside, is that correct?” Witherspoon asked.

“Well, sir, I’m not exactly suggesting anything, I’m only saying that in my experience, finding the window glass the way it was, was downright odd.”

“Are you sure about this, Constable?” Witherspoon persisted. His spirits were sinking by the minute. If that ruddy
window had been broken from inside the kitchen, then this crime wasn’t a simple, straightforward robbery at all. Drat. “I mean, surely, one can’t tell from which direction a window was broken by the way the glass is arranged.”

“I didn’t say I could, Inspector,” Barnes replied with a lift to his chin. “But I’ve done a number of housebreakin’s and it’s been my experience that when someone’s breakin’ a window to get inside a house, there’s usually more broken glass on the inside of the room than on the outside. That’s all I’m saying.”

“Hmmm.” Witherspoon started walking again. “I daresay, this case is getting more muddled by the minute.”

“Certainly looks that way, sir. Are we goin’ to be speakin’ with Mrs. Popejoy today?” Barnes asked. They’d reached the stairs of number eight. “You know, I’ve met her kind before. I wouldn’t put it past the woman to know a bit more than she let on at the inquest.”

“Why, Constable,” Witherspoon said in surprise, “whatever do you mean? I know Mrs. Popejoy’s, er, activities are a tad unusual, but she seemed a nice enough woman to me.”

“She calls herself a spiritualist, sir,” Barnes exclaimed. “Why, in my day we used to call ’em charlatans! And the way she was cozying up to them reporters, hmmph. Ought to be a law against such things. And the way she was muckin’ about with our case, trying to tell everyone at the inquest that she’d warned Mrs. Hodges on the night of the murder.” He snorted derisively. “Whoever heard of such nonsense.”

“Mrs. Popejoy claimed she’d had a message from beyond. She certainly never claimed to have told Mrs. Hodges not to go home that night. I expect the lady was merely trying to gain a bit of notoriety.” The inspector smiled wryly. “In her, er, occupation, I expect one needs to get one’s name in the paper occasionally. She certainly appeared to enjoy all the attention she received at the inquest.”

“She were positively reveling in it, sir,” Barnes said in disgust. “Hangin’ all over the press, makin’ sure they spelled her name right.” He clucked his tongue as he banged the brass door knocker. “Blimey, you’d think she were a bloomin’ politician or somethin’.”

“I must admit, I didn’t think speaking with the press was a good idea. But, of course, it would hardly be our place to try to stop her. She’s a right to talk to them if she likes, though I can’t imagine anyone wanting to actually
speak
to a journalist.” He shuddered delicately.

The door opened and a plump red-haired maid stuck her head out. “Oh, it’s you,” she said with a cheerful grin as she opened the door wide and ushered them inside. “Mr. Hodges said you’d be ‘round again. He’s in the study with Miss Marsden. If you’ll wait here, sir, I’ll announce you.”