Chapter 2
Harry asked Luigi to bring over a cup of strong coffee, then he steered Goliath to a chair. The hotel porter sat without uttering a word, despite the questions I threw at him. He was in a state of shock.
I waited until he’d taken a few sips of the coffee before beginning again in a calmer tone. “Goliath, who has been murdered?”
He took another sip then set the cup down on the table. “Do you remember I pointed out Louis Arkwright’s assistant this morning in the hotel?”
“Louis Arkwright, the author of Blackheart the pirate’s biography?” Harry asked, incredulous. “I read that book as a boy.”
“Mr. Arkwright checked into the Mayfair. He’s dying and wants to spend his final days there. I loved that book and I wanted to ask him about Blackheart’s treasure, but Miss Fox thought it wouldn’t be appropriate, him being a dying guest and all.”
“It would have been frowned upon,” Harry agreed. “So you decided to question his assistant instead?”
Goliath nodded. “Peter said his name is Chester Bradbury. I got his address from the registration book at the front desk. He was noted as one of the people to contact in the event of Mr. Arkwright’s death.”
“The check-in clerk let you browse through the registration book? That’s highly unethical.”
Goliath winced. “I waited until he was called away from the desk.”
I waved off Harry’s concern. There were more important things to worry about than a breach of hotel protocol. “Go on, Goliath. You went to the assistant’s house?”
“He has lodgings in Bloomsbury. Turns out, he’s not an assistant. He’s Mr. Arkwright’s biographer.” Goliath’s eyes flared brightly. “You know what that means, don’t you?”
I shook my head.
“Why would the writer of Blackheart’s biography need someone to write his own life story? Because he has something important to tell the world, something that would put his name on everyone’s lips again.”
“I see,” I said. “You thought Arkwright was going to leave this world in a sensational fashion with the publication of the location of Blackheart’s treasure.”
“I don’t think he’d give away the exact location, but he might expand on the clues he left in the first book, the ones that were too hard for everyone to decipher. Just giving away the location would be foolish. A book needs to be interesting, Miss Fox, otherwise what’s the point of it?”
“So you went to the fellow’s lodgings in Bloomsbury,” Harry prompted.
“It was my afternoon off. I asked the landlady at the lodging house if he was in. She said he wasn’t, but he was expected soon and I could wait.
She directed me to a sitting room Chester Bradbury uses on the first floor when he’s working.
I went in and that’s when I saw him, at his desk, with blood everywhere.
” The hand that rubbed his jaw trembled.
“I checked to see if he could be saved, but it was too late.”
“Did you leave immediately?” I asked.
His gaze lowered to the coffee cup, gripped firmly by his other hand. “I wanted to see if he was working on Mr. Arkwright’s biography, and if there were any notes about the whereabouts of the treasure. I thought I might find Blackheart’s map, or…or something.”
I sighed. “Oh, Goliath. How long were you there?”
“Long enough for the landlady to come upstairs and look in. When she saw the body, she screamed. I panicked and ran.”
“She didn’t try to stop you?” I asked.
Goliath shook his head. “She just stepped aside and let me go, screaming ‘murderer’ at me as I ran off. I came here directly.” He appealed to Harry. “I want to hire you to clear my name, Mr. Armitage. You and Miss Fox.”
“You can’t hire me,” Harry said.
“But I didn’t do it!”
Harry rested a hand on the big man’s shoulder. “I know. I meant you can’t hire me because I’ll investigate for free.”
“We both will,” I added.
Goliath blinked rapidly and I worried he might burst into tears. He nodded. “Thank you. Thank you both.”
“Don’t worry,” Harry said. “Miss Fox and I will find the murderer. But you’ll have to hide until we do. You can stay in my office until nightfall, then move to my flat.”
I glared at Harry, trying to convey without words that harboring a fugitive was a terrible idea.
He didn’t look at me, however. I suspected he was deliberately avoiding my gaze so he could claim not to have been aware of my opinion.
“You should turn yourself in, Goliath,” I said.
“Tell the police what happened, so they can focus their efforts on finding the real killer.”
“They won’t believe me!”
“Of course they will. You’ve never been in trouble before. You’re a good man. We’ll vouch for your character.”
“It won’t be enough. I was caught red-handed looking through the dead man’s things and it was several minutes between when the landlady let me in to when she saw me with Bradbury’s blood on my hands.”
“Why did you have his blood on your hands?”
He bit his lower lip and peered up at me through his lashes. “He was slumped over the desk when I found him. I pushed him back off it to see if his body covered up notes or a map.”
I groaned. If I didn’t know Goliath as well as I did, I’d be thinking rather poorly of him at that moment. “We will find the real killer, but you can’t stay at Harry’s.”
“Where should I go?” Goliath whined.
Harry placed a hand on his shoulder. “You can stay with me. For now,” he said with a pointed look at me. “It’ll be all right, Cleo. Once his name is cleared, it won’t matter where he has been hiding.”
What happened if his name was never cleared?
I rubbed my forehead, feeling like I was sliding down a steep and slippery hill, unable to control my footing. I knew there’d be no reasoning with Harry.
Harry opened the café door, checked the vicinity, then signaled for Goliath to follow him. The two elderly men on the stools chatted to one another in Italian, seemingly oblivious to the proceedings. Luigi, however, watched on as he moved a cleaning cloth in slow circles over the counter.
“Everything all right?” he asked.
“It will be,” Harry told him. “If anyone asks, my friend was never here.”
Luigi touched his forehead in an acknowledging salute.
Harry unlocked his office door then ushered Goliath inside. “Take a seat,” he said to both Goliath and me. Harry pulled over a third chair for himself and picked up a notepad and pencil. “Now, tell us exactly what you saw, starting with the body. You said you moved it.”
“There was a typewriter in front of him. He’d fallen forward, partly obscuring it.
” Goliath demonstrated the body’s position by slumping forward on the desk, face down, arms dangling at his sides, knuckles skimming the floorboards.
“I pushed him back by the shoulders so he was sitting more upright.” He showed us his fingers. The tips were still bloodstained.
“Was the body still warm?”
Goliath winced. “I don’t know.”
“Stiff?” Harry asked.
“No.”
“You said there was a lot of blood. Where, exactly, was he bleeding from?”
“The wound in his neck. There was a letter opener covered in blood on the desk, so I presume he was stabbed with that.”
Harry scribbled some notes. “Were there any signs of a struggle? Bruising or scratches on his face, knuckles, that sort of thing?”
Goliath shrugged. “I don’t know. I avoided looking at the body as much as possible.”
“What about the room? Were things strewn about, as if someone was searching for something?”
“No. It just looked like a writer’s study. The typewriter had a piece of paper still in it, there was an inkstand with pen and ink, some pencils, and a copy of Arkwright’s book about Blackheart with some of the pages bookmarked.”
“That’s it? What about notes of interviews with Arkwright?”
Goliath shook his head.
“You said the room was on the first floor. How could it be accessed?”
“I reckon it used to be a sitting room, but the landlady rented it to Bradbury to work in. It’s located at the front of the house, with a large window looking out onto the street. There was just one door leading from the corridor.”
“Did the window have a balcony?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did anything strike you as unusual?”
Goliath removed his cap and scratched his head. “The landlady was real quick to accuse me. I reckon that’s suspicious, don’t you? She may have killed him just before I arrived, and when I asked to see Bradbury, she decided to use my visit to deflect suspicion onto me.”
Harry removed his watch from his pocket. “It’s five past one now and we’ve been talking for a few minutes. What time would you say you arrived and left the Bloomsbury house?”
“I came here directly and walked really fast, so I reckon it was a quarter to one. I was only inside a few minutes.”
Harry wrote down Goliath’s answer then handed him the notebook. “Write down the address.”
As Goliath wrote, Harry looked to me, brows raised in question.
I had no questions to ask. My thoughts were rather more scattered than usual.
Harry accepted the notebook from Goliath and stood. “Try to make yourself comfortable. Cleo and I will start investigating immediately and I’ll return later today. It’ll be all right. Trust us.”
Goliath’s features relaxed. “I do, Mr. Armitage. Miss Fox is a better detective than the ones at Scotland Yard. You, too, of course.”
Harry picked up the Kodak Brownie box camera I’d given him for his birthday, and we left Goliath with instructions not to open the door to anyone except Luigi. We then asked Luigi to take up a bowl of pasta and something to drink, before heading to Bloomsbury.
We hadn’t got far when Harry touched my elbow to get my attention. “Are you all right, Cleo? You’re not usually this quiet at the beginning of an investigation.”
“I’m worried, Harry. If we can’t find the killer, Goliath is in serious trouble. As you will be, if he’s caught at your office or flat.”
“It’ll be fine. Have faith.”
“I do have faith in you.”
“Not in me. In you.” He gave my elbow a gentle squeeze before letting go. “What are your thoughts so far?”