Chapter 5 #2
He headed off while I made my way to the door.
It wasn’t until that moment that I realized there was one very important question I’d failed to ask everyone.
Pearl’s funeral had not been announced in the newspapers.
Lord Rumford had insisted it be a private affair for those closest to her.
If no one knew the man with the disfiguring warts, how did he come to be at the funeral?
How did he know when and where it would take place?
If he hadn’t made inquiries of the theater manager, two of her friends, or her sister, then who had told him?
I exited the theater and found the doorman standing exactly where he had been earlier, beside the blackboard sign. “Excuse me,” I said. “Do you always work here on the door?”
“Only during performances, and at special events like today.” He jerked his head towards the sign.
“Were you on the door last night even though there was no performance?”
“Aye. Mr. Culpepper needed me to keep everyone out. Miss Westwood’s admirers wanted to get in and pay their respects, see.”
“Did anyone ask about her funeral?”
“Several, but I didn’t tell them. Mr. Culpepper said it was supposed to be a private service and I weren’t to tell no one about it, so I didn’t. I swear to you, miss, I told no one.”
The man doth protest too much. A little nudge should procure a confession from him. “Come now, nobody expects you to withhold the details from her most intimate friends. That wouldn’t be fair, would it? They deserve to attend her funeral too.”
“That’s not for me to decide.”
“But you did tell one person, didn’t you?” I pressed. “He gave you a very large incentive to tell him, didn’t he?”
The doorman stared straight ahead. He was considerably taller than me and very well built.
His collar struggled to contain his neck and he wore no gloves, probably because he couldn’t find any to fit his broad hands.
He could snap me like a twig if he wanted to.
And yet he looked worried by my questioning.
“I won’t tell a soul, and certainly not Mr. Culpepper,” I said quietly.
“Your secret is safe with me. But this is a murder investigation and I need to know about the man who paid you a considerable sum of money to tell you when and where Miss Westwood’s funeral would be.
If you don’t, I’ll have to inform the police that you wouldn’t co-operate. ”
“The police!” He rubbed the back of his neck.
“All right, but there’s not much to tell.
He came here last night when Mr. Culpepper was inside with the others, having a drink in Miss Westwood’s honor.
When I wouldn’t let him in, he asked me about her funeral and I told him.
He said he was a real good friend of Miss Westwood’s and, like you said, a good friend has a right to farewell her. ”
I suspected the man had paid him too, but admitting as much went against the doorman’s code of honor. “What did he look like?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he have warts or sores on his face?”
“I didn’t see his face. It was dark and he wore his coat collar up.”
Damnation.
“There was one distinguishing thing about him, miss,” the doorman said.
“Oh?”
“His carriage. The doors were green.”
The doors of the carriage the warty gentleman had driven away in were green. It had to be the same man. I opened my bag and pulled out some coins. How much did one pay for this sort of information?
The doorman put up his hand to halt me. “Keep your money, miss. I really didn’t see his face and that’s the truth.”
I thanked him and headed off into the busy early evening throng of Piccadilly Circus and wondered what path to follow next. While I’d learned quite a bit about Pearl from those who’d known her, I was little better off than I’d been at the start of the day.
I was in luck and caught Mr. Hobart just as he was about to leave the hotel for the day. “Did you think of something that I can do to involve Mr. Armitage in the investigation?” I asked.
He plucked his hat off the hat stand by the office door and reached for his coat. “I’m afraid not.” He indicated I should go ahead of him into the corridor.
I waited as he locked the door behind us and walked with him to the foyer. “What about the situation with Mr. Clitheroe?” I whispered lest we be overheard by Mr. Hirst.
“There is no situation,” he whispered back. “The fellow you saw must have indeed been Mr. Clitheroe. He does have a prominent nose. Besides, there’s no reason for Mr. Hirst to lie.”
Mr. Hobart really was na?ve if he thought that.
Indeed, now that I thought about it, the former housekeeper had stolen the silverware from under his nose.
If it hadn’t been for one of the staff telling him directly that it was missing, and if Mr. Armitage and I hadn’t investigated, the former housekeeper would have got away with it.
For some reason, that naivety only made me like Mr. Hobart more. But it didn’t help solve crimes.
“There’s one way to solve this definitively,” I said. “You must point out Mr. Clitheroe to me. I’ll be able to tell you immediately if he’s the same man I saw that night.”
Mr. Hobart gave me an apologetic look. “I’m afraid Mr. Clitheroe checked out today. So that’s the end of that.”
I doubted it, but bit my tongue. Perhaps I could involve Mr. Armitage in the case again.
He didn’t need his uncle’s approval to investigate.
He could make discreet inquiries of the staff or follow Mr. Hirst when he left the hotel.
Indeed, it was a good compromise. If he wouldn’t share the Pearl Westwood case with me, perhaps he would consider the Hirst one.
I headed up to my room and, using the speaking tube, asked the kitchen to bring up a cup of tea. To my surprise, Harmony brought it along with two cups.
“Shouldn’t you have finished for the day?” I asked her.
She set the tray down in the sitting room and poured tea into the cups. “I’ve been waiting in the kitchen for you to get back. I thought if you didn’t order tea straight away, I’d soon hear you were back from Goliath.”
“Am I really that predictable?”
She handed me a cup and saucer then eased herself down on the sofa with the other. “Lord, my feet ache.”
“Put them up on the table. I don’t mind.”
“Lord no! This is a sitting room in one of the Mayfair’s best suites!”
I couldn’t help smiling. “You’re such a snob when you want to be.”
She pouted. “This table looks expensive and it shouldn’t have feet on it.”
“Then kick your shoes off and recline on the sofa.”
She considered this a moment then undid the laces on her shoes. She sighed with contentment as she leaned into the sofa’s end, her long legs outstretched beside her. “Mrs. Short had me running all over the hotel today, up and down, fetching this or that. I think it’s a test.”
“For what?”
“To see how agreeable I am. She’s been doing it to all of us. Those who complain get the pointy end of her sharp glare.” She sipped then put down the cup. “So what did you learn today?”
I told her about the funeral this morning and the anonymous gentleman paying his respects, as well as the conversations I’d had at the memorial service at the Playhouse.
“Everyone agrees that Pearl was frivolous and liked the nice things Lord Rumford gave her, but there were differing accounts of jealousy. Her understudy says no one was jealous of Pearl or Rumford, yet another actor said men adored her and would have liked to be in Rumford’s place. ”
“And if she’d rejected one, he might have become angry and violent?”
“Precisely.” I sipped my tea as I thought. “Perhaps I should ask Danny for his opinion of the actor. Mr. Alcott says he knew Danny, and I suspect that knowledge was of an intimate nature.”
“I’ll ask him,” Harmony said. “He’ll be honest with me.”
“Why wouldn’t he be honest with me?”
“Because you’re a Bainbridge.”
“I’m a Fox,” I said snippily. “I’m also very friendly and accepting of people, no matter who they’re intimate with.”
“You’re also related to his employer.”
She was right. No matter how much I didn’t like it, the fact was, most of the staff treated me differently and always would. Mr. Armitage had been right about that. “You don’t seem to care that I’m Sir Ronald’s niece.”
She flashed me a smile as bright as the electric bulb hanging from the ceiling. “That’s because I’m different to most folk.”
“You certainly are, Harmony.”
Her smile vanished and she once again became serious. “So what should we do now?”
“I have an idea, as it happens. Mr. Culpepper the theater manager suggested that Lord Rumford was actually going to end the affair with Pearl because he didn’t believe she loved him completely.”
Harmony screwed up her nose. “Is that a good reason to end it with a lover who’s much younger and more attractive than yourself? I mean, didn’t he already know she didn’t love him and was just with him for the gifts?”
“Perhaps he was blind to her true feelings.”
“Stupid, more like.”
“Whatever we think, if there’s even the slightest chance Pearl could have killed herself, we must consider it. We aren’t positive she was murdered yet.”
Harmony drained her teacup and set it down. “So you think we should ask Rumford if he was going to end it with her?”
I shook my head. “Not ask. Would he even give us a direct answer? He won’t want us to think he was responsible for her throwing herself off the balcony.”
“If Pearl wasn’t in love with him, she wouldn’t have thrown herself off the balcony if he was going to end it with her. She’d be relieved she could move onto someone else.”
It was what I’d thought too. “Mr. Culpepper thinks she liked the gifts too much and if she was having financial difficulty, she might be worried about losing Rumford.”
Harmony sat up straight, putting both feet on the floor. “This is all backward, Cleo.”