Chapter 7 #2
Harry gently took her hand and directed her to sit again. “This must be very upsetting for you. I assure you, if we find anything that belongs to you, we’ll return it.”
“His notebook… That’s very dear to me. If you find it, I’d like to keep it.”
Harry merely smiled, patted her hand, then left.
Once they were out of earshot, I turned to Mrs. Corrin with a sympathetic look. “Firstly, may I say I’m sorry for your loss. By all accounts, Mr. Bradbury was a wonderful man.”
She sniffed and pressed the handkerchief to her nose. “He was a good man. I loved him very much.”
“Then why did you carry on with Mr. Symond?”
She blanched and lowered her head before drawing in a deep, rallying breath.
“It was nothing. Mrs. Jeffry is making a mountain out of a molehill. She never liked me. She’s one of those women who doesn’t like other women, particularly beautiful ones.
Just because the death of her husband made her miserable, she wants every other widow to give up, too.
Not all of us farewelled good husbands. Some of us are free of bad ones.
” Realizing how that made her sound, she dabbed the handkerchief to the corner of her dry eye again.
“Meeting kind, gentle Chester renewed my faith in men. So much so that I was willing to marry him.”
Willing to? She made it sound like she was darning his socks as a favor.
I kept my opinion to myself. Indeed, I stayed silent. I waited.
Eventually, Mrs. Corrin filled the silence.
“What happened between Mr. Symond and me was a one-off occurrence. Chester didn’t know about it, and I would appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone, particularly Mr. Symond’s sweetheart, Miss Newman.
” She gave a small shiver. “That woman has a fierce temper. She makes Mrs. Jeffry’s tirade on the doorstep just now seem like a gentle admonishment. ”
“Are you quite sure Mr. Symond thinks it’s a one-off occurrence?” I asked.
“Of course he does. He told me as much.”
“Could he have wanted you all to himself?”
She pulled a face. “Lord, no. He wasn’t jealous of Chester, if that’s what you’re asking. It was a harmless little interlude for us both.”
“Harmless,” I said, flatly. “It had the potential to cause a great deal of trouble.”
“Not with my fiancé. Chester would have overlooked it for the sake of keeping me. He was so in love with me that a little indiscretion wouldn’t matter.”
“You’re forgetting Miss Newman.”
“Believe me, I haven’t forgotten her. One does not forget Miss Newman.” Mrs. Corrin pressed the handkerchief to her chest, as it rose and fell with her deep breaths. “Please do not tell her. I’m begging you, Miss Fox. She doesn’t need to know, as it won’t happen again.”
“Is she capable of violence?”
“Oh, yes. I’ve heard her throw things at Mr. Symond in his bedchamber during one of their fights.
Not even that nosy prude Mrs. Jeffry dared go in and tell them to stop.
” She made a miffed sound through her nose.
“It’s all right for Miss Newman to be in his bedchamber unsupervised, but I was never allowed in Chester’s, and we were engaged!
Mrs. Jeffry was too afraid of Miss Newman to order her about. ”
“Do you think her capable of stabbing a man if she was riled up enough?”
“Why are you asking about her? Isn’t the tall man the killer?”
“The police are keeping an open mind. Mr. Armitage and I are private detectives consulting on this investigation, so it would help if you answered my questions as if I were a member of the Metropolitan Police.”
She looked past me to the door. “That handsome fellow is a private investigator?” She patted her hair at the nape of her neck and thrust out her bosom.
A little spark of jealousy ignited within me, much to my shame. It was the only explanation for what I said next. “He’s not rich.”
Her hand lowered to her lap. “In answer to your question, Miss Fox, yes. I can see Miss Newman committing murder, if she was enraged.” She suddenly gasped.
“She asked Chester about the treasure. He told me so. He said Miss Newman tried to trick him into giving up its location, but he was too clever for her and didn’t tell her anything.
“When did he tell you about the treasure?”
“The night we met, at the house of a mutual friend a month ago.”
“Only a month! That was a brief acquaintance before your engagement.”
“It may not seem long, but when you know you’ve met the one, Miss Fox, you don’t want to be apart a moment longer. Chester was special. I knew it straight away.”
He was indeed special. No other man could claim to know the location of a pirate’s treasure. None under the age of eighty, anyway.
“Miss Newman knew Chester kept a notebook of his interviews with Louis Arkwright,” Mrs. Corrin went on.
“If she believed he’d written the location of the treasure in there when Arkwright revealed it to him, perhaps she killed Chester so she could steal it.
” She lifted her gaze to the ceiling as one of the floorboards above us creaked.
“If the notebook is missing, I’d wager she has it. ”
“And if it’s found, you’d like it,” I added.
“He jotted down his personal thoughts in there, so naturally I’d like to keep it. It’s the most intimate thing of his.”
“And may also contain the location of the treasure.”
“Except that I don’t believe it does.” At my surprise, she smiled. “I know you think I’m a fortune hunter, too, Miss Fox, but I’m not. You see, despite Chester’s boasts that he’d found the treasure, I don’t believe he had. It was merely a way to drum up publicity for the book.”
“But he hadn’t informed the newspapers about it. There was no publicity. Indeed, the biography wasn’t written.”
“He was going to inform the press if his publisher didn’t increase the advance. He was clever, my Chester. Cleverer than some gave him credit for,” she added quietly.
“How was he in the days before his death?” I asked. “Afraid? Excited about the book?”
She frowned as she considered her response. “He was excited, but when I saw him the day before he died, he was rather thoughtful, distracted. I asked him what was wrong, and he told me he’d learned something important.”
“From Arkwright?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t elaborate. It may not have had anything to do with the biography.”
“Could it have had anything to do with the other visitors who called on him in the days leading up to his death? Apparently the actress Ida Gainsborough was here, threatening him, and he had a visit from an old university friend, Mr. Mathers.”
“I don’t know anything about a man named Mathers, but Chester did tell me about Ida Gainsborough.
” Mrs. Corrin leaned forward in her eagerness to impart gossip.
“He said she still has an indefinable quality about her, but he struggled to articulate it for her biography. He was quite enamored when he spoke about her. Until she showed up here, that is, ranting and railing at him. He found it quite upsetting, but her carrying on achieved nothing. Their contract allowed him to print the scandalous details she didn’t like, so he told me.
She should have read it more closely if she didn’t want some things included.
Ah, the tea is finally here. Do set it down near me, Mrs. Jeffry. ”
Mrs. Jeffry put the tray down on a table out of Mrs. Corrin’s reach.
At least she was gracious enough to pour her a cup of tea.
I was worried she might refuse altogether.
We sat in silence while the floorboards above our heads continued to creak and groan.
I was relieved when I heard footsteps on the stairs, and Harry and D.S. Fanning entered the drawing room.
“Did you find anything?” Mrs. Corrin asked.
“Nothing related to the tall man seen running off,” D.S. Fanning said.
“Yes, but…anything else?”
“The notebook wasn’t there,” Harry told her.
She set down her teacup. “I must be off. I have things to do, funeral arrangements to make, that sort of thing.”
D.S. Fanning departed along with her. Mrs. Jeffry offered Harry a cup of tea, but he declined. I took the hint and quickly finished mine.
“See what I mean?” Mrs. Jeffry said as I drank.
“Mrs. Corrin is a very merry widow and a fortune hunter. If the police don’t think the tall man did it, they should look closely at her.
Apparently she was home alone yesterday morning.
There’s no one to vouch for her. Mr. Bradbury may have let her in, she murdered him then left, all before I got home. ”
“You think her capable of murdering the man she was going to marry?” I asked, sounding as shocked as I felt. The two women may not like each other, but for her to blame the murder on Mrs. Corrin was rather extreme.
“She didn’t love him,” Mrs. Jeffry went on. “She was only marrying him because she wanted the pirate’s treasure. Now all she wants is his notebook, because she believes he wrote its location down in there.”
“The fact she doesn’t have it, and the fact he died before they married, would imply she didn’t kill him,” I pointed out. “She’d be better off if he’d died after their marriage.”
“I suppose. Anyway, the tall man did it and I’m sure the police think so, too.”
Harry and I saw ourselves out. It was no longer raining, so we decided to walk. I wasn’t sure where we ought to go next, so hopefully a stroll in the fresh air would help trigger some ideas.
“Did you find the notebook?” I asked him.
“No.” He glanced over his shoulder at the house. “Did you mean what you said in there? You don’t think Mrs. Corrin is a suspect?”