Chapter 16
“Idon’t know a Mrs. Jeffry.” Ida Gainsborough was a good actress on stage, but she was quite transparent when confronted face-to-face. It was easy to tell she was lying.
“Be honest, Miss Gainsborough,” I said. “If we discover you’re hiding something from us—and we will—it will make it appear as though you murdered Chester Bradbury.”
“I didn’t!”
Harry and I waited on the doorstep, watching her.
With a heavy sigh, she gave in. “You’d better come inside. I’m sorry about the mess. I just knocked a flowerpot off the windowsill.”
I sat on the sofa while Miss Gainsborough sat opposite, her head in one hand. After a moment, she looked up, leaving behind a smudge of dirt on her forehead. Harry collected pieces of pot and placed them on the windowsill but he left the spilled soil and joined me on the sofa.
“You’re right,” Miss Gainsborough admitted.
“I do know Frieda Jeffry. She went by another name when we met years ago, as young dancers. We became friends instantly and have remained friends ever since, despite her leaving the stage to marry. She has always been there for me, providing me with a shoulder to cry on through the ups and downs of my career. So when Mr. Bradbury wrote those things in my biography, naturally I went to her for sympathy. I vented my anger, cried a lot, and that was that. Or so we both thought.”
“Was this before Bradbury leased rooms from her?” Harry asked.
She nodded. “She told me when he applied and said she was going to reject him for my sake. I knew she was growing desperate, though, and insisted she accept his application. I tried staying away from there. I really did. But the temptation to confront him kept gnawing at me, until I couldn’t ignore it anymore.
I called at the house and we argued. I’m ashamed to say that I said some rather awful things to him. ”
We’d been informed of that argument by Mr. Symond, not Mrs. Jeffry. It was the start of her lies by omission.
“Frieda sent a note to warn me that my name came up when you spoke to her on the day of the murder,” Miss Gainsborough went on.
“She advised you on what to say,” Harry said.
Miss Gainsborough stilled. “I didn’t lie about not killing him. I simply failed to mention I went back to talk to him the day he died to apologize for the awful things I said.”
Harry and I both inched forward. “You were there?” I prompted.
“At what time?” Harry asked.
She hesitated. “I’m not sure. Between midday and half past, I think. Anyway, there was no answer when I knocked, so I left.”
“Did you see anyone in the area?”
“No. But Frieda must have seen me leave, because the next thing I knew, I received her note telling me to tell you both that I wasn’t there at all. She warned me that if I didn’t, I’d be a suspect.”
Considering Mrs. Jeffry was adamant that Goliath murdered Bradbury, why did she think a note was necessary?
Because she didn’t believe he did it.
Harry indicated the soil from the pot, scattered over the floor. “Do you have a dustpan? I’ll clean that up for you.”
She waved him off with dirty fingers. “It’s not necessary, but thank you.”
Her stained fingers had left smudge marks on her forehead, and the windowsill too where she must have held onto it to pull herself up when we arrived. That’s the trouble with soil. It leaves marks.
As does blood. The violent murder of Chester Bradbury had resulted in a lot of blood. It would be on the killer’s hands or gloves. Touching the door handle would leave a mark, whether that be the main door or the balcony door, but I couldn’t recall seeing any.
Someone had cleaned those bloodstains off.
Given Mrs. Jeffry was on the scene already when Goliath arrived, it was likely to have been her.
She’d also acted suspiciously by warning Ida Gainsborough to lie to us about visiting that day.
Mrs. Jeffry could only have known Miss Gainsborough was there if she’d seen her, yet she said she’d been in the kitchen before Goliath’s arrival.
Was she inside earlier than she claimed and didn’t answer Miss Gainsborough’s knock because she was too busy wiping the blood off door handles and her own hands?
Not only that, but she’d accused Goliath at first, then cast suspicion on every other alternative suspect, including Bradbury’s fiancée, Mrs. Corrin, then Bill Watson. She was trying to lay the blame elsewhere from the very start. Goliath just happened to be the most obvious option.
It was time to confront Mrs. Jeffry.
The woman herself saved us the journey. Harry and I saw her as she walked briskly away from Miss Gainsborough’s building. She tried to divert course when she spotted us, but I intercepted her before she could cross the street.
Realizing she couldn’t escape, she put on a smile. “Good morning, Miss Fox. I was just passing on my way to the market.” She tapped the handle of the basket over her arm. “I’m in rather a hurry.” She went to move around me, but I blocked her path.
“Don’t make a scene, Mrs. Jeffry. Things look bad enough for you as it is.”
Her eyes widened, unblinking, and her throat moved with her hard swallow. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“We’ve just come from Miss Gainsborough’s flat. You two are friends.”
“Who?” she asked weakly.
“It’s difficult to keep all the lies straight in your head, isn’t it?
” I asked, my tone sympathetic. “Trying to remember them all gives you a headache. But it’s no longer necessary.
Miss Gainsborough told us you warned her we’d pay a visit and advised her not to tell us she was at your house on the day of the murder. ”
She swallowed heavily again and didn’t try to deny it.
I suspected I was right about her trying to keep the lies straight.
Real life wasn’t like performing in a play.
There were no scripts to follow and no rehearsals.
She had to make it all up as she went along, and she wasn’t quite capable of keeping all the threads of her lies as well as the truth from becoming entangled.
I added one more thread to the mix. “The only way you could know that Miss Gainsborough was at the house is if you were already home, but you told us you didn’t return until twelve-thirty, which is the latest she says she was there.”
“It was twelve-thirty when I returned!” Her quick, confident response had me second-guessing myself. The timings of comings and goings was the most difficult thread to follow, yet she’d responded without hesitation.
“Come with us back to Miss Gainsborough’s flat,” Harry said. “We’ll discuss it there.”
“I told you, I don’t know anyone by that name.”
“You don’t know the name of one of the most famous actresses of our time?”
Mrs. Jeffry hoisted the basket higher, resting it on her hip. “I do not.”
“You’ve known one another for years.”
“No.”
“I see. So if Miss Gainsborough lied about that, what else has she lied to us about, Cleo?”
“That she left the house without entering?” I suggested. “Or that she didn’t kill Bradbury?”
“She isn’t lying!” Mrs. Jeffry’s defense was exactly what a dear friend ought to say. Friends protected one another.
But what if the protection was the result of a misunderstanding?
“You thought you were shielding Miss Gainsborough,” I said. “That’s why you lied about seeing her, and why you warned her we were coming to ask questions. You thought she’d killed him.”
“Don’t be absurd,” she shot back. Her gaze, however, did not meet mine.
“You’re a dreadful liar, Mrs. Jeffry. Don’t be upset. It’s to your credit.”
“She didn’t kill him!” Mrs. Jeffry’s somewhat belated outburst attracted the attention of passersby who suddenly gave us a wide berth. She lowered her voice. “She’s not lying about any of it. She’s completely innocent.”
“That’s what she told us just now, too. We believed her, by the way.”
“You did?” she asked on a rush of breath.
Harry indicated she should walk with us back to Miss Gainsborough’s building. “Let’s discuss this civilly, where we can’t be overheard. We wouldn’t want to spread damaging gossip just when Miss Gainsborough has secured a part in a new play.”
Mrs. Jeffry finally agreed.
The actress was surprised to see us again so soon after our departure, and with her friend in tow. The two women clasped hands before Miss Gainsborough invited us inside.
She’d cleaned up the spilled soil and put away the broken pieces of the pot, but the smudges of dirt on the windowsill were still visible. I now suspected Mrs. Jeffry was as innocent as Miss Gainsborough, and hoped she’d clear up the issue of the lack of blood on any door handles.
But I began at the beginning. “Miss Gainsborough told us she knocked on the door of your townhouse on the day of the murder sometime between twelve and twelve-thirty. When there was no answer, she left.”
Mrs. Jeffry no longer attempted to lie. Either she could see that I believed her friend, or she’d become too overwhelmed by all the threads she needed to keep separated in her head.
“It was closer to twelve-thirty. I saw her walking away from the house just as I turned the corner. She was too far away, so I didn’t call out, but I could tell she was upset by her purposeful strides and rigid back.
I presumed she’d come to have it out with Mr. Bradbury again, after their previous encounter hadn’t gone well.
At that point, I didn’t realize Mr. Bradbury was inside, and I thought she’d left after no one answered. ”
“Which is what happened,” Miss Gainsborough said earnestly. “No one was home, so I didn’t go in.”
Mrs. Jeffry’s face crumpled, her lower lip wobbled. “Later, after I saw him dead, I thought you had gone in. I thought you…”
Miss Gainsborough blinked wide eyes at her friend, then placed an arm around her shoulder. “I could never murder someone, Frieda. As much as I’ve said I wanted to kill a few men over the years, I’d never actually go through with it.”