Chapter 4
Ifound Harmony in the staff parlor reading one of the books I’d loaned her.
When I entered, she slammed the book closed and hugged it to her chest, covering the cover.
When she realized it was me, she let out a breath and lowered the book.
Since staff were not allowed to borrow books from the hotel library, she was right to be cautious.
If one of the senior staff caught her with it, she’d be in trouble.
Mr. Hobart might merely chastise her, but Mrs. Short, the new housekeeper, could dock her pay.
Mrs. Short had proved to be just as mean as her predecessor.
Harmony had once quipped that it seemed to be a requirement of employment for housekeepers to be mean to their maids.
“Why didn’t you return home?” I asked her. “You’ve been up since before dawn. You must be exhausted.”
“I couldn’t leave without finding out how you went at Miss Westwood’s place.” She offered me a cup of tea. There was always a warm teapot in the staff parlor with spare cups to use. The maids or kitchen staff must replenish the pot and cups as needed.
“No, thank you, I just had a cup.”
She gasped. “You helped yourself to a dead woman’s tea?”
“Her sister was there retrieving some clothes to dress Miss Westwood’s body.”
Harmony pulled a face. “What an awful thing to have to do.”
It was. While I’d been too young to take on such a task when my parents died, I’d helped my grandmother press my grandfather’s best suit after his death, and gone through her wardrobe to decide what to dress her in for her funeral. It had been among the hardest things I’d ever had to do.
I sat and was about to tell Harmony all about my afternoon when the door opened and Victor sauntered in.
Dressed in clean chef whites, he must not yet have started his shift.
The knife belt strapped around his hips was fully stocked until he perched on the edge of the table and removed the small paring knife.
He twiddled it as if it were a pencil, not a sharp blade that could slice off a fingertip.
It was no wonder he had scars on his hands and another on his face.
“What are you doing here?” Harmony asked him, her tone brisk.
“I heard Miss Fox was back.” He nodded a greeting at me. “Afternoon.”
I nodded back. “Good afternoon, Victor. When do you start?”
He glanced at the clock. “In fifteen minutes, so you best be quick.”
I arched my brows. “With what?”
He caught the knife and for a moment, his hands were still. “Telling us about your visit to the actress’s home.”
Harmony bristled. “Who told you?”
“Goliath.”
She rolled her eyes. “I need to have a word with him about loose lips sinking ships.”
I smiled. “It’s quite all right. One more knowing that I’m investigating won’t matter. Just don’t tell anyone that Lord Rumford has asked me to look into it. He doesn’t want a scandal.”
He nodded just as Goliath entered, followed by Frank. They removed their brimless hats, threw them on the table, and poured themselves cups of tea.
“Have we missed anything?” Goliath asked, turning to face us.
“Miss Fox was just about to tell us what she discovered at the actress’s flat,” Victor told him.
Harmony glared at him. “She was just about to tell me. The three of you weren’t invited to this meeting.”
Goliath pouted, his shoulders slumping forward, and Frank stared into his teacup.
Victor merely shrugged. “Just pretend we’re not here.” He twirled the knife again.
Harmony’s jaw set so hard I could hear her back teeth grinding.
“Apparently we’re a team,” I told her before she could scold him again. “Along with Peter, of course.” I glanced at the door, expecting him to walk in at any moment. But it remained closed.
She lifted her chin. “You and I are a team.” She sniffed. “Although I’ll concede that we may require their help on occasion.”
“Good of you to see it that way,” Victor said evenly. It was difficult to tell when he was trying to rile her. Sometimes I was quite sure of it, but at others, his face was so straight that he couldn’t possibly be anything other than serious.
“But this is not one of those occasions,” she finished.
Frank eased himself onto a chair with a groan. “That’s better.”
Goliath slapped him on the shoulder. “Quiet, old man. Miss Fox doesn’t want to shout over your creaking bones.”
“I’m only a few years older than you.”
Goliath snorted. “If a few is fifteen, then sure.”
“Fifteen! How old do you think I am?”
“Stop it,” Harmony hissed. “Let Miss Fox speak.”
With the group quiet, I told them about meeting Mrs. Larsen and what she’d told me of her sister’s nature and their fractured relationship. I described the flat with its many photographs of Miss Westwood and the lack of jewelry and personal letters, except for those written by Lord Rumford.
“Where did you look?” Victor asked.
“Everywhere,” I said.
“Where exactly?”
“The dressing table, writing desk, wardrobes, and cupboards.”
“Did you look in the jars in the cupboards?”
“Yes,” I said, feeling pleased that I was a step ahead of him.
“What about under the carpet?”
“I pulled back the rugs and felt for loose floorboards. I tapped the walls looking for hollowed spaces, and checked for hidden triggers to open false bottoms in the desk and dressing table.”
“What about inside the mattress and cushions?”
My bubble of satisfaction deflated. “No. But I don’t think I would have found any jewelry. I think her sister took them with her when she left.”
He tucked the paring knife in his belt and crossed his arms. “If you want to go back, I can pick the lock and get you in.”
“Victor!” Harmony cried. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Yes, Victor, what’s wrong with you?” I mocked.
Harmony didn’t know that Victor had helped me break into the boy’s orphanage, but she must have suspected since she’d pointed me in his direction when I’d asked for someone who could help.
“There’s no need to break in.” I held up my purse. “I have the key.”
Victor almost smiled. Despite his seriousness, I was quite sure he had a sense of humor, particularly when it came to teasing Harmony.
“She was a beauty, all right,” Frank said, as if we’d just been talking about Pearl’s looks.
“I went to see her perform once, but I couldn’t afford the good seats.
But her presence on the stage carried all the way back to me.
” His gaze took on a dreamlike quality as he remembered the show. “Rumford was a lucky man.”
Goliath smacked him in the shoulder. When Frank frowned at him, Goliath tried to surreptitiously indicate me with a sideways glance.
Frank shrugged and said, “What?” with oblivious innocence.
“It wasn’t luck,” Harmony said. “Rumford paid her to be with him. Not that I blame her for being his mistress.” When the men all blinked at her, she added, “At least she got something out of the arrangement. Unlike a wife.”
The men continued to stare.
“I don’t blame Pearl either,” I said. “Her beauty was a gift, and must we not use our natural gifts in whatever way we can?”
“It’s a gift that wouldn’t last,” Harmony pointed out.
Mrs. Larsen had said the same thing, that she’d tried to tell her sister her beauty would fade and that she shouldn’t rely on it. I didn’t think Mrs. Larsen was jealous of Pearl, simply a more practical person.
“From looking around her flat, I do think Pearl was rather vain,” I said. “From the photographs, I’d say she knew how to pose, how to look her best, and how to appeal to men. Almost all of the photographs had her standing with one or more men.”
“Maybe a jealous lover killed her,” Victor said. “Someone who hated that she was Rumford’s mistress.”
“Someone who didn’t have enough money to compete against Rumford,” Harmony added. She turned to me. “You should find out if a man came to the theater asking after her.”
“I’m planning to,” I said. “Considering she died at the theater, the murderer is probably someone she knows from there. An actor who was in love with her, perhaps, or a jealous actress, or a besotted audience member. I’ll go tomorrow afternoon, after the funeral.”
“Why go to her funeral?” Goliath asked.
“To see who cared enough about her to show up.”
Our meeting over, we exited the parlor. Goliath and Frank disappeared into the service rooms behind the parlor, while Victor peeled away from them to head down the stairs to the basement kitchen.
I held Harmony back. “Did you overhear Lord Rumford talking to Mr. Hobart about his suspicions that Pearl was murdered?”
“Yes.”
“Were you listening in from the other side of Mr. Hobart’s office door?”
She looked somewhat sheepish and yet defiant at the same time. “I was dusting in the corridor and saw him go in. I didn’t plan to listen in, it just happened.”
I narrowed my gaze. “Mr. Hobart was going to tell Mr. Armitage about the investigation. Mr. Armitage accused me of stealing the case from him.”
She cringed. “In my defense, Lord Rumford didn’t once specifically say he needed the services of a private detective.”
“It was implied, and you know it.”
She chewed on her lip. “Was Mr. Armitage very mad?”
“Yes, but he calmed down eventually. And thank you for leaving me to face him alone, by the way. I hadn’t pegged you as a coward.”
“He used to be my superior. It’s hard to think of him as an equal now. Anyway, you were better off being alone with him, without me interfering.”
“Why?”
Mr. Chapman, the restaurant steward, came around the corner and stopped short upon seeing us.
Dressed in the tailcoat all the senior male staff wore, the rosebud he always added to one of the buttonholes each evening was already in place.
He was tall, but unlike Mr. Armitage and Goliath who were also tall, Mr. Chapman took advantage of his superior height to look down his nose at us.
“Harmony, stop bothering Miss Fox,” he said snippily.
“She wasn’t,” I said.