The Mystery of the Clockwork Sparrow (8 page)

Billy looked even more troubled. ‘That’s the worst of it,’ he said, lowering his voice. ‘She’s upstairs with the policeman, too.’

Mr Cooper’s office seemed full of sombre, black-clad men. He ushered Sophie in brusquely and pointed her to a low chair.

‘This is Sergeant Gregson of the Metropolitan Police. He works out of Scotland Yard,’ he said, his clipped tones sounding even more curt than usual as he gestured to a fatherly looking older man with small round spectacles and a drooping moustache. ‘And this is Mr McDermott, an inquiry agent working for Mr Sinclair, who is helping Sergeant Gregson with his enquiries.’ An inquiry agent meant a private detective, Sophie knew, although the grizzled person standing in the corner didn’t look in the least like one of the gallant heroes from Billy’s stories.

She was still struggling to make sense of what she had been told. The store had been burgled . . . the jewels stolen . . . Bert
shot
by the burglars.

‘Gentlemen, this is Miss Taylor from our Millinery Department . . .’ Mr Cooper’s voice faded away into nothing, and he straightened the collar of his neat black suit with an uncharacteristically nervous gesture. In spite of the feeling of dread that was beginning to creep over her, Sophie felt a sudden stab of sympathy for the store manager. After all, he was the one ultimately responsible for security, always so determined to keep everything running in the most perfect order. And this had happened on the very evening before the store was due to open for the first time.

All at once, she became conscious of Sergeant Gregson’s eyes fixed on her, now cold and serious over the rims of his spectacles.

‘Miss Taylor, I want you to answer some questions about what happened yesterday,’ he began. Please listen carefully and answer as fully as you can.’

Sophie realised with some irritation that he was talking especially slowly, as if he thought she would have difficulty following him. Her cheeks flushed with annoyance as he continued.

‘Omit no details, but stick to the facts only, please. We don’t want any shop girl gossip here. A man is gravely injured: I am sure you realise this is a very serious matter. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, sir,’ she replied shortly.

‘You have been working here, in the Millinery Department, for how long?’

‘Just two weeks, sir. The same as the other salesgirls.’

‘You were working in your department until around six o’clock last night, is that correct?’

‘Yes, sir. The same time as all the other girls.’

‘And you left the building as usual?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Did anyone actually
see
you leave?’

Was he suggesting she wasn’t telling the truth? ‘Yes, I think so. The other girls from my department left just before me. There were other people still there though – Uncle S– I mean, Sidney Parker. And I think Dot – Dot Baxter from Ladies’ Fashions. And –’ she broke off, uncertainly.

‘
And?
’

She wasn’t sure if she should mention it, but perhaps it might be important. ‘As I came on to the street, there was a young man there – a vagrant,’ she said hesitantly. ‘He looked unwell. I stopped to give him some money.’

Sergeant Gregson raised his eyebrows slightly, but made no comment. He seemed less and less fatherly with each second that passed. ‘But having left the shop as normal, you later returned?’ he went on.

‘Yes.’

‘Why exactly was that, Miss Taylor?’

‘I had forgotten something,’ she explained as briefly as she could, hoping that he would not ask for any details. ‘I went back to fetch it.’

‘It couldn’t have waited until the morning?’

‘No,’ she said simply.

‘And what exactly was it, this vital object that you could not leave until the next day?’

‘I would rather not say,’ she said carefully. ‘It has no bearing on . . . what happened. It has nothing to do with it.’

The man called McDermott smiled grimly at her from his corner, and spoke for the first time. ‘You would be surprised, Miss Taylor, how often the things you might think would be the most irrelevant are in fact the most important.’

‘Thank you, Mr McDermott,’ said Gregson, sounding rather irritated by this interruption. He turned his stony gaze back to Sophie. ‘Well?’

Sophie sighed. She would simply have to tell the truth: this was the police, after all. ‘It was something belonging to another staff member. A jacket. He had given it to me to have it laundered.’

Gregson gave her a stern look. ‘Laundry? That doesn’t sound particularly urgent to me, Miss Taylor. Can you explain to us exactly what you mean?’

‘It was his uniform jacket. It had got rather dirty, owing to a mishap. He didn’t want anyone to see it. I forgot it and I didn’t want him to get into any trouble.’

Gregson took off his spectacles and put them sharply down on the table. ‘Miss Taylor, this all seems rather silly. Why exactly would a
jacket
cause trouble?’

Mr Cooper interjected at this point, to Sophie’s relief: ‘We have rules here about appearances, Sergeant. Mr Sinclair is particularly keen that employees are always well turned out. It is an important principle of the business. There are small penalties – fines and so forth – imposed for untidiness.’ He turned to Sophie, ‘I believe I know who you’re talking about. One of our apprentices, gentlemen – a bright young lad, but unfortunately a little slapdash. I had cause to have a few words with him yesterday and no doubt he was nervous about this incident coming to my attention. Is that right, Sophie?’

Sophie’s heart was beginning to thump apprehensively. ‘Yes . . .’ she said reluctantly, hating the thought that she might have got Billy into trouble.

Gregson shook his head, as if the whole situation was quite incomprehensible to him. ‘Very well. Cooper, what is this boy’s name?’

‘Billy Parker.’

‘Any relation to Sidney Parker?’

‘Yes, indeed. His nephew.’

Gregson nodded curtly and turned back to Sophie, fixing his gaze upon her once more. ‘So you went back to the store. How did you get in?’

‘The staff entrance was locked but the side door in the stable-yard was still open. I went in that way.’

‘And what time was this?’

‘I’m not sure exactly. I don’t have a watch. I should say around half past six, maybe a little later.’

‘Hmmm. And then what happened?’

‘I went in, got the jacket from upstairs in the Millinery Department and came straight down again. I saw Mr Cooper on my way out and then I left and went home.’

Gregson leaned back in his chair and contemplated her coldly. ‘What do you know about the exhibition of Mr Sinclair’s jewels?’ he asked, suddenly.

‘Very little. I didn’t have anything to do with it. I’d only read what was in the newspaper. I didn’t have a chance to go and look at it. We were very busy getting everything ready for this morning.’

‘But Mr Cooper here tells us that you were in the Exhibition Hall last night.’

‘Yes, but only for a moment, on my way out of the shop.’

‘That’s not usually the way staff come in and out of the building, is it?’

‘No,’ Sophie said, keeping her head held high. Sergeant Gregson’s eyes seemed to bore into her. ‘The back stairs were rather dark. I was a little nervous, so I went the other way.’

‘But you weren’t too “nervous” to go and look at the exhibition?’

‘It caught my attention for a moment, that was all. It was the little bird – the clockwork sparrow. But then I saw Mr Cooper and I left.’

‘The sparrow, eh? That interested you?’

Was he trying to trip her up? She shook her head vigorously. ‘Not especially. It just happened to catch my attention for a second or two. I thought it was pretty.’

‘I’m sure you did,’ said the Sergeant witheringly. ‘Now tell me, Miss Taylor: what exactly is your relationship with the injured man, Albert Jones? I understand you are, er . . .
romantically
involved. Is that the case?’

‘No!’ Sophie exclaimed, half rising in her seat. ‘That is not the case! I barely know him!’

‘Please, Miss Taylor. There is no need to upset yourself. I am simply repeating what I have been told. Several people have reported that you spoke with him earlier that day in the refectory.’

‘He spoke to me – yes. But before that, we had barely exchanged two words!’

‘And yet it was a conversation of a personal nature?’

‘He asked me to walk out with him,’ she said tightly, her cheeks flushing with embarrassment. ‘But I made it perfectly clear that I didn’t want to. That was all – and you can ask anyone who was there, and they will tell you that’s all that happened.’

‘And you mean to say that this was the only time you spoke to him?’

‘I suppose we might have spoken once or twice during our training; I don’t remember. And I did speak to him again when I left the shop that evening,’ she added, reluctantly.

‘Ah. The first time you left, or the second?’

‘The second.’

‘Most interesting. Where did you speak to him?’

‘He was standing in the yard when I came out of the shop.’

‘What was he doing there?’

‘I don’t know. He seemed to be waiting.’

‘For you?’

‘No – at least I don’t think so. He seemed surprised to see me. He couldn’t possibly have known I would be there.’

‘And what exactly did you speak about, with Mr Jones, as you left the shop? Please tell us exactly.’

Reluctantly, Sophie dragged her mind back to the darkness of the stable-yard the previous evening. Her stomach felt hollow as she remembered. ‘I said I was going home, but he wouldn’t let me pass.’ The men around her were watching her, passing judgement on her, she thought angrily: ‘Then I managed to get away, and I ran off. That was all. I went straight home.’

‘I see. And what time was this?’

‘I don’t know. It was about half past seven when I got home, so perhaps around seven o’clock?’

‘You can’t be any more precise?’

‘I’m afraid not. As I said, I don’t have a watch.’

Gregson glanced down at a paper in front of him. ‘And you reside in “digs”, is that correct?’

‘Yes, at Mrs MacDuff’s boarding house. Several of the girls that work here live there too.’

‘Did your landlady see you that night?’

‘No – I was too late for supper. But Edith and Minnie and one or two of the other girls saw me as I was coming in.’

Gregson nodded, but his face gave nothing away. ‘Thank you, Miss Taylor,’ he said gravely. ‘That will be all for now – you may go back to your duties. But I believe we have more to talk about, so we will want to speak with you again very soon.’

The sergeant did not rise as she turned blindly to leave the room. To Sophie’s surprise it was the quiet, grim-looking detective McDermott who put a hand on her shoulder and guided her out of the door. Outside, she stood still, unsettled.

‘Don’t be alarmed, Miss Taylor,’ said Mr McDermott crisply before he turned back towards the office. ‘He simply needs to know exactly what you saw. It’s very important because if all you say is true, you may have been the last person to see Bert Jones before someone made a serious attempt on his life.’

He disappeared back through the office door, leaving Sophie standing in the passageway bewildered and alone.

B
y lunchtime, Sinclair’s was electric with speculation. There were whispers down the corridors, murmurs in the cloakroom, lowered voices in the refectory.

‘Did you hear that Cooper saw her lurking around the exhibition after hours?’

‘You know she left at the usual time, but then came back to the store later? She says she forgot something, but it sounds fishy to me.’

‘I heard that Bert was working for a gang, and they planned the robbery. She was helping them!’

‘They were in on it together. They were going to run off with the loot.’

‘No, you’ve got it all wrong. I heard that he saw the gang break in and tried to stop ’em. That’s why they shot him. He’s a hero!’

‘But what about her? What’s she got to do with it?’

‘She was with that policeman for hours this morning. He must suspect her of something.’

Outside in the yard, Billy was loading the deliveries. Moving fast and angrily, he heaved a succession of boxes into the van for delivery to customers one after another.
Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.

‘More haste, less speed,’ said George. ‘There could be porcelain china in there, for all you know.’

But Billy felt too furious to do anything slowly. He couldn’t believe all the rubbish those idiots were talking about Sophie. As if she could have had anything to do with that awful fellow Bert! As if she could be mixed up in a burglary! The worst of it was, it was all his own fault. If only he hadn’t got into that stupid fight with that boy in the stables and ended up on his face in the muck. If only he had just taken what was coming to him like a man and not gone looking for help. It was all because Sophie had been looking out for him – going back to fetch his stupid old jacket – that this had happened. He heaved another box on to the wagon with an ominous crunch.

There was nothing he could do to help her, either. As soon as he had heard what everyone was saying, he had gone straight to Uncle Sid, but his uncle had said the same thing as always: ‘Keep your nose out! The Law are in charge now. It’s not for the likes of you to go sticking your oar in.’

After that, Billy had decided that the only thing for it was to go directly to Mr Cooper himself. It didn’t matter what the consequences were: he felt it was a matter of honour. But Cooper had been even chillier than usual. Almost before Billy had even had a chance to open his mouth, the store manager had put a finger to his lips, looked at him pointedly, and said ‘Thin ice, Parker,’ before sending him straight back to work.

And so here he was. But every time he heard one of those chumps say something about Sophie, he felt awful all over again. He’d even heard some of them talking to that sneering policeman who wrote down every word they said in his black notebook. All Billy could really do now was to hope that the policeman would soon find out what had really happened. But it was hard to have much faith in him. He didn’t seem to have done anything so far, other than keep Sophie holed up in Cooper’s office for half the day.