Chapter 3 #2
“I do recall. It was after Sunday lunch. Mr. Bradbury had just gone out for a walk, which he likes to do after a big meal. His visitor was rather annoyed to have missed him. I suggested he wait, but he declined, saying he didn’t have the time.”
“Do you know his name?” Harry asked.
“He left a calling card, which he asked me to pass on to Mr. Bradbury.” She stood and crossed the room to the escritoire by the window.
She removed a card from a tray and passed it to Harry.
He studied the card, but I was rather fixated on her movement.
Her skirts barely rustled with her sleek, gliding steps.
“I did pass it on, but Mr. Bradbury gave it straight back to me. I gathered from his reaction they weren’t friends, after all. ”
“Archibald Mathers,” Harry read, handing it to me. He had an odd look on his face, but I couldn’t decipher it.
I studied the card, too, but the name didn’t ring any bells. The address on the card was for a place in Wiltshire.
“Do you know if they met up later?” Harry asked.
“I don’t,” Mrs. Jeffry said.
“And Archibald Mathers claimed to know Bradbury from their university days?”
“That’s right. Cambridge.”
That got my attention. I was raised in Cambridge, not far from the university where my father taught mathematics.
I sometimes attended lectures there along with other women, although we weren’t allowed to be awarded degrees.
I’d not returned since arriving in London last December, but I regularly wrote to the friends I’d left behind.
Although Mr. Bradbury and Mr. Mathers most likely studied at the university years ago, I could make inquiries if necessary.
I handed the card back. “Any other visitors recently?”
Mrs. Jeffry went quite still, her gaze focused intently on me. It was as if she was purposely not looking at Mr. Symond. “Mr. Bradbury’s fiancée was here yesterday. She visits frequently.”
“Someone should inform her,” Mr. Symond said. “I’ll do it.”
“I’m sure you will.”
“She’ll be upset,” he countered.
“As will your own lady friend when she finds out you’ve been attentive to another woman.”
Mr. Symond fidgeted with his tie as if it were suddenly too tight. “Yes. Well. Perhaps it’s best if she doesn’t find out. To keep the peace, you understand,” he added with a light, half-hearted laugh.
An air of satisfaction settled over Mrs. Jeffry. “Mrs. Corrin will quickly find another beau. I never did think she and Mr. Bradbury were very suited anyway. It wouldn’t have lasted.”
“Why?” I asked. “Did they argue?”
“They were just very different. He was bookish and quiet. He kept to himself. Mrs. Corrin is very attractive and outgoing. Some would say she’s a merry widow.” Again, she studiously avoided looking at Mr. Symond.
Mr. Symond avoided looking at her, too. Not that he seemed guilty, however. I’d say he was worried.
“Where can we find Mrs. Corrin?” Harry asked.
“Why?” Mr. Symond shot back. “The murder has nothing to do with her.”
“How do you know?”
“Well, I, er…”
Mrs. Jeffry rose and went to the escritoire again. “It’s possible she sent that tall fellow here to do away with Mr. Bradbury.”
“Why?” Mr. Symond asked.
Mrs. Jeffry didn’t answer as she searched through the calling cards on the tray. She found the one she wanted and brandished it like a trophy. “Mrs. Corrin’s address is on there,” she said, handing the card to Harry. “You may keep it, Mr. Armitage.”
D.S. Fanning returned with a cup of tea for Mrs. Jeffry, only to be immediately called away again by his superior.
I caught a glimpse of the body being carried on a stretcher, a sheet covering it.
A small shiver rippled down my spine. I’d seen Mr. Bradbury alive and well at the hotel only a few hours earlier.
He must have been heading upstairs to Mr. Arkwright’s suite where he was supposed to spend several hours interviewing his subject.
“Bradbury had one other visitor recently,” Mr. Symond said. “That old actress…what is her name again?” He snapped his fingers then pointed at Harry. “Ida Gainsborough. That’s probably a stage name. Mrs. Jeffry, do you have a card from her?”
“No. And I wouldn’t call her old. She’s my age.
Or a little older.” She sniffed. “Anyway, her visit was last week. I doubt the murder has anything to do with her. In fact, I believe the tall man acted alone, of his own accord. He’s the one the police need to find.
” She peered at the door. “Where are those detectives? They can tell you what you need to know, if you are in fact working with them.”
Harry assured her that we were. “Just a few more questions before we go. Mr. Symond, tell us more about Ida Gainsborough’s visit. Were she and Bradbury known to one another?”
“Apparently he wrote her biography.”
I’d read a review about the biography, as it happened. I didn’t read the book itself, nor did I know that Bradbury was the author, but the review claimed it contained some salacious details about her past. Details the reviewer was surprised that Miss Gainsborough authorized to be included.
“They argued during her visit,” Mr. Symond went on. “She was furious with Bradbury. I could hear her from my room upstairs.”
“What did they argue about?” I asked.
“Apparently she’d told him certain things in confidence and they were never meant to be included in her biography. She threatened to take him to court.”
Mrs. Jeffry got to her feet. “Excuse me, I see the inspector and I forgot to tell him something.”
“Oh?” Mr. Symond prompted.
“He ought to know that Mr. Bradbury was supposed to be at the Mayfair Hotel interviewing Mr. Arkwright.”
“How is that relevant?” That seemed to be Mr. Symond’s favorite question.
“It probably isn’t,” Harry said, also rising. “We’ll inform the detectives, Mrs. Jeffry. Thank you for answering our questions.”
She sat again, and frowned in thought. “I just don’t understand who the tall fellow was, and why he killed Mr. Bradbury.
He seemed quite amiable at first. Indeed, he seemed thrilled to be meeting someone with a close connection to Mr. Arkwright.
The tall man mentioned the book Mr. Arkwright wrote about Blackheart.
He was very enthusiastic, and almost childlike in his excitement. ”
“There you are then,” Mr. Symond said. “It seems to me the killer was a fanatic. One of those mad Blackheart enthusiasts who believe the pirate buried a treasure and informed Arkwright, and only Arkwright, about it. Utter nonsense.” He tapped his forehead.
“Anyone who believes that story isn’t all there. ”
Once again I bit my tongue to stop myself defending Goliath. “Are you suggesting the tall man came here to ask Mr. Bradbury if Mr. Arkwright had told him the location of Blackheart’s treasure?”
“Seems plausible to me, yes. I mean, getting one’s hands on untold riches is a powerful motive for murder.”
“Wouldn’t he have needed Mr. Bradbury alive to help him find it?”
“Not if Bradbury already gave him a location or couldn’t because there is no treasure, which is the more likely scenario if you ask me.”
“Or Mr. Bradbury didn’t know where it was buried,” Mrs. Jeffry added. “Perhaps when he told the tall man as much, he killed him out of frustration. As you say, Mr. Symond, if he isn’t all there then violence is the only thing he understands. It’s his natural reaction to a setback.”
Harry and I thanked them. “Don’t get up,” I added when they both rose. “We’ll see ourselves out and pass on everything you said to the detectives.”
Mrs. Jeffry sat again. “I wonder what Mr. Arkwright will do now. He’ll be rocked by the news of Mr. Bradbury’s death. He seemed to like his company.”
“You’ve met Mr. Arkwright?” I asked.
“He came here two weeks ago and spent all afternoon with Mr. Bradbury in the sitting room.”
“How did he look?”
“As you’d expect a man of eighty to look.” She frowned. “Come to think of it, he seemed better than most his age. Not at all like a dying man, and yet Mr. Bradbury told me that’s why he moved into the hotel. How odd.”
Indeed.
Harry and I made to leave, only to stay put when a newcomer strode into the drawing room, the detectives following behind as if she’d dragged them along in her wake. She perched herself on Mr. Symond’s lap and threw her arms around his neck.
“What an ordeal you’ve been through!” she cried.
Mrs. Jeffry’s lips pinched in disapproval as she leaned a little away from the couple. The woman noticed and climbed off Mr. Symond’s lap. Hands on hips, she glared at the landlady. “What are you looking at?”
“Nothing,” Mrs. Jeffry muttered, sipping from her teacup.
“Prude,” the woman muttered under her breath.
The two women were each other’s opposite.
Where Mrs. Jeffry was tall and slim with a natural grace, the newcomer was stocky, her features a little too strong and her jaw a little too square to be considered conventionally pretty.
Nevertheless, she commanded attention. When she’d entered the room, it was as if she’d brought a tempest with her.
I didn’t know whether to keep a wary eye on her or get as far away as possible.
D.I. Latimer coughed to get everyone’s attention. “I believe we’re finished here. Good day to you all.” He and D.S. Fanning left. Although Harry and I didn’t exchange a word, we both stayed. It seemed he was as intrigued by the newcomer as me.
The woman turned away from him and extended her hand to Mr. Symond. “Are you all right, darling? It must have been traumatic for you.”
Mr. Symond took her hand and scrambled to his feet. “It was an unpleasant thing to arrive home to. Miss Fox, Mr. Armitage, this is my friend, Miss Newman.”
She nodded in acknowledgment then turned back to Mr. Symond. “The police said Bradbury was murdered. Did his boasting come back to bite him?”
“Boasting?” Harry asked.
Miss Newman regarded him properly for the first time, but I couldn’t make out what she thought of him from her expression.
“Bradbury hinted that he knew details about the location of Blackheart’s treasure.
He seemed to think it made him important.
” She huffed, the sound a guttural one of disgust. “Small men like him tend to grasp at anything to make themselves appear bigger than they are.”
Mr. Symond winced. “Only a fool would believe him, of course.”
“Seems like a fool did,” Mrs. Jeffry added.
“The policemen just told me they’ll give the killer’s description to the newspapers,” Miss Newman said. “That’ll flush him out.”
The landlady nodded stiffly, almost reluctantly.
She seemed to have trouble meeting Miss Newman’s gaze.
“The killer must have wanted information about the location of the treasure, and having heard Mr. Bradbury’s boasts, came here to convince him to give it up.
When Mr. Bradbury refused, or couldn’t answer because no such treasure existed, the man lashed out and killed Mr. Bradbury.
He must have taken Mr. Bradbury’s notebook with him to study at leisure, hoping to find clues to its whereabouts within Mr. Arkwright’s interviews. ”
“What notebook?” Harry asked.
Mrs. Jeffry blinked back at him. “The notebook Mr. Bradbury always kept on him. It’s missing.”
“How do you know if you didn’t go near the body?”
“I informed the police he always had it on him. They searched but failed to find it. So they told me.”
Harry and I had no more questions, so rose to leave.
Mrs. Jeffry insisted on escorting us, and once out of earshot of the drawing room, she admitted using our departure as an excuse to escape.
“That woman, Miss Newman, she makes me anxious.” Mrs. Jeffry glanced back the way we’d come.
“They’re lovers, you know. When I first caught her entering Mr. Symond’s room, I told her that I run a respectable house and she must only meet him in the drawing room.
Well, the language that spewed from her mouth!
It would make a dockworker blush. I don’t know what gutter he picked her out of, but she’s bad news, and I think he has finally realized.
Poor man can’t get rid of her now, though. He’s scared of what she might do.”
“What makes you think he wants to end their relationship?” I asked.
She leaned closer and lowered her voice. “I saw Mr. Bradbury’s fiancée, the widow Corrin, coming out of Mr. Symond’s room. I’d learned my lesson, and I kept my mouth shut, but I don’t mind telling you that I was shocked.”
“Do you think Mr. Bradbury knew Mrs. Corrin was having an affair with his fellow lodger?”
She shook her head. “He had his nose in a book most of the time. He wouldn’t notice anything unless it was written on a page in front of him. The question is, what’ll happen if Miss Newman finds out? Dear Lord, I hope she doesn’t find out here. Goodness knows what damage she’ll cause in her anger.”
I’d only met Miss Newman briefly, but I suspected the landlady was right to be worried.
Harry and I left, but it was some time before we discussed what we’d learned.
Indeed, we’d learned so much that I was still digesting it all when he mentioned the thing topmost on his mind.
To my surprise, it wasn’t the love triangle, the pirate treasure, or the angry former actress whose secrets had been exposed in the biography written by Bradbury.
It was the fact that he was certain Mrs. Jeffry was lying. “She was evasive when we asked if she’d been near the body. She claimed she hadn’t, yet she opened the doors to the balcony and noticed the notebook was missing.”
“Perhaps she took the notebook,” I said, “but is planting the idea in everyone’s head that Goliath took it.”
“She was also evasive about the timing. You picked it up, Cleo. Symond came home and heard her screaming, but he didn’t see Goliath running away.
” He stopped and looked up and down the street.
“The house isn’t near a corner, so he would have been visible for at least thirty seconds running in either direction.
It doesn’t sound like long, but anything more than that is a long time to be screaming at the top of your lungs.
Considering she was quick to accuse Goliath in the first place, I wonder if she’s hiding something. ”
“Like the fact that she’s the murderer?”
We continued walking. I was mentally considering how long it would take for Goliath to disappear and how long it would take Mr. Symond to walk from the end of the street to the house, when Harry brought up the second thing on his mind.
“I know Bradbury’s university chum, Archibald Mathers.”