Chapter 17
D.I. Hobart had years of experience at Scotland Yard.
He’d investigated all manner of crimes and encountered many criminals.
His knowledge was vast, his instincts honed.
So I took on board his suggestion to look closer at Miss Newman, even though there was no evidence against her, purely based on her family connection.
Mrs. Hobart, however, didn’t like tarring her with the same brush as her relatives. “You can’t condemn a young woman based on the actions of others.”
“I’m not,” he said. “I’m merely suggesting they check her alibi again.”
“You may not be condemning her outright, but you’re going in with a particular view of her based on her family, and that view isn’t one of innocence. It’s not fair to her.”
“They have to give her serious consideration,” he pointed out.
“I agree, as long as they go in with minds open.”
He grunted, which may have been agreement or not, I couldn’t tell.
Mrs. Hobart turned her narrowed gaze onto her son.
Harry put up his hands in surrender. “We’ll look at her again but assume innocence until proven otherwise.”
“Good. What about other suspects?”
“There’s Mrs. Corrin, Bradbury’s fiancée,” I said. “Perhaps she discovered he didn’t know the location of the treasure either, became angry, and killed him.”
Mrs. Hobart’s lips pinched in disapproval. “She wasn’t marrying him for love, then.”
“Unlikely, unless my instincts are off.”
“Your instincts are rarely off, Cleo,” Harry said.
“Does she have an alibi?” Mrs. Hobart asked.
Harry shook his head.
“There you are then,” she declared, as if she’d just solved the mystery. She settled her bag on her lap. “Now, has the rain stopped?”
The rain had eased enough that they were prepared to continue their shopping. Harry and I wanted to discuss the case a little more before leaving to interview Miss Newman. As he walked his parents to the door, his father laid a hand on his shoulder.
“Go carefully, Harry. The Newmans are dangerous. If they’re backed into a corner, they will use violence to get out of it.” His gaze flicked to me, but he refrained from advising that I not join Harry to interview Miss Newman. He probably knew I’d protest.
Harry closed the door behind them and returned to the desk.
He picked up his notebook and flipped through the pages until he found what he wanted.
“Symond says he left his last client at a quarter to twelve on the day of the murder. He collected Miss Newman from her brothers’ shop and together they walked fifteen minutes to the flat they were inspecting.
By twelve-forty, they were back at the shop.
” He perched on the edge of the desk and shrugged.
“To get there and back, as well as spend a few minutes looking through the flat, they didn’t have enough time to divert to the scene of the murder. ”
“What if the alibi is false?”
“We telephoned the landlord, Cleo.”
“Whose number was given to us by Mr. Symond. What if the number was false, with a friend of his speaking on the other end?”
Harry wagged a finger in thought. “Or one of Miss Newman’s brothers. We’ll try to get them to admit it.”
I grasped his hand before he moved out of reach. “They’re not going to admit it, Harry. They’re an established criminal family that knows how to avoid arrest. If we confront them, they’ll deny it.”
“They won’t want to be accessories to murder.”
“A murder that was possibly committed by their own sister. They won’t rat on her.”
“It may have been committed by Symond. They won’t want her to be accused of being his accomplice if he’s guilty.
I’ll offer them a deal. If they admit they gave him a false alibi, I’ll leave her name out of it when we tell the police.
” He bent to kiss my forehead. “You stay here, Cleo. I’ll talk to them. ”
I suddenly stood, bumping his chin with the top of my head. “You’ll do no such thing. You heard your father. The Newmans are dangerous. Secondly, if you offer them a deal, you’ll simply force them to blame Symond, even if he isn’t guilty.”
He sat on the edge of the desk again. “All right. We’ll speak to Miss Newman and Symond instead.
Even if just one of them is the killer, the other knows because of the alibi.
The problem is, how do we get them to talk?
We’ve got no evidence and therefore no leverage.
We don’t even have a motive. All we have is a process of elimination that led us to think it’s them, and a criminal connection to the Newman family. ”
“Speaking of eliminating suspects,” I said, talking slowly as my mind worked through the possibilities. “We haven’t eliminated Mrs. Corrin either, after all. Also, I don’t think the pirate treasure is the motive for the murder at all.”
The roots of a theory had begun to form earlier when I’d realized the notebook had been burned in the fireplace.
I’d initially thought it had been destroyed so no one else could learn about the treasure’s location, but what if it was to destroy something else Bradbury had written down? The question was, what?
“Is that because Symond didn’t believe the treasure existed?” Harry asked. “He could have been lying to us if, in fact, he’s the killer.”
“He could have, but I don’t think so. Mr. Mathers overheard Mr. Symond telling Mrs. Jeffry that he believed it was a hoax, and that’s before the murder, when he had no reason to lie.”
“Could the motive be jealousy? We know Symond had an affair with Mrs. Corrin. What if Bradbury found out, confronted Symond, and they fought with tragic consequences? Or the situation was reversed. Perhaps Bradbury looked at Miss Newman a particular way, and Symond became offended and killed him. Or Mrs. Corrin found out, and in a fit of jealousy she killed him. I agree we shouldn’t eliminate her just yet, Cleo. ”
“Jealousy can definitely be a catalyst for committing awful deeds,” I said. “Indeed, whether it proves to be the motive for this murder or not, I know a way that jealousy can help us narrow down our list of remaining suspects even further.”
Harry flashed a crooked smile. “Are you planning something devious to get a confession?”
I returned his smile. “Does it bother you that I have a devious streak?”
“Quite the contrary.” He hooked me around the waist and pulled me against him. “I like it very much.”
* * *
Harry and I watched the boy deliver my note from beneath the awning of a bakery across the road from Newman Butchers. It wasn’t Miss Newman who emerged a few minutes later, however. It was both of her brothers. They turned the open sign to closed, shut the door and trudged off.
“Closing up already?” Harry murmured.
A knot twisted in my gut, but I didn’t get a chance to tell Harry my concerns. Miss Newman emerged from the shop and crossed the street to join us.
Her severe brow plunged into a frown upon seeing Harry and me. “What are you doing here?”
“Apologies for the subterfuge,” I said. “We didn’t think you’d come if you knew it was us.”
“So you pretended to be Mrs. Corrin?” She held up the note between her two fingers. “Do you really have information about my fiancé or is that a lie, too?”
“Unfortunately, that part is true.”
A regalness settled over Miss Newman as she went very still. I’d pegged her as the sister of ruffians, the daughter of a known criminal, yet in that moment of suspension—the moment of knowing yet not knowing that her fiancé was up to no good—she could rival the queen for stoic poise.
“Go on then,” she said. “What did he do?”
I indicated my note, still clutched in her hand. “I think the fact you were prepared to speak to Mrs. Corrin when you thought that was from her suggests you have a good idea.”
Miss Newman screwed up the piece of paper and tossed it into the gutter. “She’s a tart, so yes, I do have a good idea what this is about. Tell me what you know.”
“To put it rather bluntly, she and Mr. Symond have had at least one liaison.”
The flash of jealousy gave me a pang of regret that we’d been the ones to confirm her suspicion, even though it had been my idea to use her jealousy against her. “That whore.”
“It takes two to have an affair,” Harry pointed out. “Symond isn’t innocent.”
She swore under her breath then glanced over her shoulder in the direction her brothers had gone. “Why have you come here to tell me?”
I suspected she knew the answer to that, too, but wasn’t going to offer up the information until pressed. So I pressed. Hard. “You gave Mr. Symond a false alibi for the time of the murder.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and squared her shoulders. “I did no such thing.”
“Come now, Miss Newman,” Harry said, calm as can be. “You didn’t go to view a flat. The telephone number Mr. Symond gave us for the landlord directed here, to the shop. Don’t bother denying it,” he added when she opened her mouth to speak. “We checked with an operator at the exchange just now.”
She snapped her mouth shut and pinched her lips.
“One of your brothers answered it,” I went on. “That means one or both of them also participated in supplying a false alibi for you and Mr. Symond. They’d only do that if they were protecting you, Miss Newman. It was you who murdered Chester Bradbury.”
“No! It wasn’t me!” After a moment, she added, “Neither of us had anything to do with it.”
I gave her a sympathetic look. “Is he really worth going to jail for? And sending your brothers down, too?”
“Or was the murder of Bradbury their idea?” Harry asked.
“Leave my brothers out of this.” She went to walk off, but I grabbed her arm while Harry moved to block her path.
She closed her hands into fists, and I thought she might swing one at me. I prepared to dodge it, but two women emerging from the bakery provided a timely reminder that we were in public and Miss Newman composed herself.
Harry had hit a nerve by mentioning her brothers, so I hit it again. “Your family are known criminals, Miss Newman.”
“No one has ever proved anything against my brothers,” she hissed.