Mrs. Jeffries and the Mistletoe Mix-Up (15 page)

“What’s he going to do after he takes Cochran’s statement?” Hatchet asked.

“He’s going to speak to Daniel McCourt’s solicitor to see how much his estate is worth and who inherits it. Then he said something about broadening the scope of the investigation by speaking to other collectors.”

“Is there any way to guide the inspector toward questioning the help at the Alexandria Hotel?” Hatchet asked.

“I mentioned it to Constable Barnes this morning,” she replied. “Why? Is it important?”

“I certainly think so,” Hatchet replied. “As madam mentioned yesterday, we went to a dinner party last night at Lord Farleigh’s, and I started making some discreet inquiries amongst the footmen and coachmen who were in the servants’ hall. I found out a bit more about McCourt’s meeting there.”

“So Lucille wasn’t just blowin’ hot air,” Luty cried triumphantly.

Hatchet ignored her. “Apparently, before the lady in question appeared and stepped out of the lift, McCourt had been in the lobby for some time, and at one point, he jumped behind a large potted fern to avoid being seen by someone else who’d entered the lobby.”

“How could anyone see somethin’ like that?” Luty argued. “Maybe he slipped behind that plant to adjust his clothin’.”

“Don’t be absurd, madam. My source was utterly sure of what he saw,” Hatchet shot back. “He said McCourt stood well out of sight for a good two minutes and then came back out into the open.”

“Did your source see who it was that McCourt was hiding from?” Ruth asked.

“I’m afraid not, but he saw something that Lucille Fenwick missed.” He grinned at Luty. “Our mystery woman was accompanied by a Chinese servant. Once he arrived, the three of them left the lobby.”

“Did they go to her room?” Mrs. Goodge asked. “I wouldn’t have thought the hotel would allow such goings-on.”

“I don’t know exactly where they went, but no one on the hotel staff stopped them, as it’s a very respectable place,” he replied. “Oh, and I also found out that the house next to the McCourts’ is empty. The Crandalls have gone to Scotland for Christmas.”

“No wonder I wasn’t caught yesterday,” Mrs. Jeffries murmured. “I thundered down that passageway loud enough to wake the dead.” She tried to absorb this new information, but for the life of her, she couldn’t think what it might mean.

“I’ll bet the mystery woman is the one that Jerome Raleigh claims he saw,” Wiggins speculated eagerly. “You know, the one he said was ’angin’ about outside.”

“Come on, lad, you know better than that,” Smythe chided. “No jumpin’ the gun until we’ve got all the facts. We’ve gone down that road before, and we’re most always wrong.”

“Besides, we don’t even know if Raleigh was tellin’ the truth,” the cook added. “He may have been makin’ the whole thing up to get the inspector off of him.”

Luty looked at Hatchet. “Are you done yet?” she asked plaintively. He nodded, and she plunged ahead. “You weren’t the only one who heard somethin’ good last night. I got an earful, too.”

“Oh, do tell, madam,” he said dryly.

Luty laughed. “I found out that Daniel McCourt was fixin’ to sue Arthur Brunel for slander. Seems that for the past three years, Brunel has been tellin’ everyone who stood still for thirty seconds that McCourt used a bunch of legal shenanigans to cheat him out of his share of his and Leon’s father’s estate.”

“Is that a rumor, or did your source know for certain the lawsuit was going to go forward?” Mrs. Jeffries asked.

“It was more than a rumor.” Luty grinned broadly. “My source was the wife of one of the partners in the legal firm that McCourt had hired for the case. Not only that, but she told me that McCourt had been quietly goin’ around London gettin’ the names of people willin’ to testify against Brunel.”

“Cor blimey, now that McCourt’s dead, I guess there won’t be a lawsuit,” Wiggins murmured.

“But why would McCourt sue Arthur Brunel?” Mrs. Goodge frowned in confusion. “Didn’t the inspector say that the fellow was in such a bad financial situation he’s bein’ forced to turn the top two floors of his house into flats?”

“Indeed he did,” Mrs. Jeffries murmured thoughtfully. “But perhaps McCourt didn’t care.”

“Or maybe ’e just wanted to shut the fellow up,” Smythe added. “Maybe ’e was sick and tired of Brunel slingin’ mud at his reputation.”

“But how could McCourt afford to sue Brunel?” Hatchet drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “From the comments that Elena McCourt has made recently, it sounds as if her late husband had no money at all. Didn’t she say something to the effect that ‘it was now his turn to worry’? It takes financial resources to bring a case against someone.”

“If he was quietly going about London looking for people to testify on his behalf,” Mrs. Jeffries said, “then perhaps he started the suit before he realized he couldn’t depend on his wife for financial support.”

“There’s somethin’ I don’t understand,” Phyllis said quietly.

“What’s that?” Mrs. Jeffries reached for the teapot.

“Well, from the gossipy bits we’ve all heard, it seems as if it’s only been recently that Mrs. McCourt has stood up to her husband, and it seems as if she only stood up to him because she’s now the one with the money, right?”

“To date, that is how it appears.” Mrs. Jeffries eyed the girl speculatively. “What are you getting at, Phyllis?”

Phyllis chewed her lower lip thoughtfully. “If Mr. McCourt was now havin’ to depend on his wife financially, where did he get the money to buy whatever it was that he was goin’ to show all the guests at the tea party?”

“Of course I’ll answer your questions and cooperate any way that I can, Inspector.” Charles Cochran smiled politely at the two policemen as they took their seats in front of his massive desk. He was a short, slender man with graying hair, hazel eyes, a long, bony face, and a mustache. “I want you to catch Daniel’s killer.”

Cochran’s office was on the third floor of a rust-colored brick building on a road off the Marylebone High Street. It was half past nine in the morning, but heavy clouds had rolled in from the west, and the light coming in through the windows was gray and dreary.

“You and Mr. McCourt were close friends,” Witherspoon began.

“Not at all,” Cochran interrupted. “I did see Daniel at the reading of the Herron family will, of course. But for a good number of years now, we’ve only seen one another if we happened to accidentally meet. We have some mutual acquaintances, and sometimes we’d run into one another at a social function. I was very surprised to receive an invitation to tea. However, I am morally opposed to murder.”

“Aren’t most people opposed to murder?” Barnes was intrigued by Cochran. He was different from what he’d expected. To begin with, his office, though filled with shelves of law volumes and file boxes, also housed two fat tabby cats sleeping on thick rag rugs in front of the small fireplace, and on the edge of the desk was a stack of brochures from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Instead of the usual portrait of Her Majesty over the mantelpiece, there were two framed charcoal drawings, one of William Wilberforce and one of Thomas Clarkson. Just above the pictures was a framed copy of Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

“Yes, but their opposition isn’t based on morality or absolutes of right or wrong; it’s based on personal self-interest and an overwhelming need for law and order,” Cochran explained earnestly. “Governments hang people and send young men off to war and don’t consider it murder. Taking a life in defense of property either by a private citizen or an agent of the law isn’t considered a crime, and colonial governments acting on England’s behalf commit atrocities against native peoples frequently, yet no one hauls the local English governors up before the court.”

“But the taking of life isn’t necessarily murder,” Witherspoon interjected.

“That’s my point, Inspector; it should be,” Cochran chided gently. “And much as I personally found Daniel McCourt an objectionable person, no one had the right to take his life. But you gentlemen didn’t come to debate the ethical nature of law and governments with me. You have questions you want to ask. Please, go ahead.”

Witherspoon stared at him in annoyance. It didn’t seem right that the fellow should snatch the moral high ground without an argument. But he was correct; there were questions to be answered. “Considering that you and Mr. McCourt were not friends,” he said, “why do you think he invited you to his home?”

“At first, I was mystified by the invitation,” he replied. “Not only had I not seen nor heard from Daniel in ages, but we had absolutely nothing in common.”

“You’re not a collector of Oriental art or weapons?” Barnes asked.

“Not at all.”

“Mr. McCourt worked here, didn’t he?” Witherspoon glanced around the office to give himself a moment to think. Something important nudged the back of his mind, and over the years, he’d learned to trust this “inner voice.” But he couldn’t catch the little imp, and the feeling evaporated as quickly as it had come.

“Yes, for a few months when he first qualified. But he resigned shortly before his wedding,” Cochran replied. “He met his wife when he took some papers to her family home.”

“You were their solicitors?”

Cochran shook his head. “Not at that time. When I first met the Herron family, we represented the sellers of a piece of property Mr. Herron wished to acquire. It was several years later when their family solicitor died that we were asked to represent the Herrons. By then Daniel had been gone from our firm for years. We did, however, draw up the papers for the marriage settlement between Elena Herron and Daniel. But we were acting on McCourt’s behalf at that time, not the Herron family. Since he left the firm, the only time we’ve met is if we ran into one another by sheer chance.”

Barnes said, “Was the tea party the first time you’d been to his home?”

“Yes.”

“You just said, ‘At first, I was mystified by the invitation.’” The inspector repeated Cochran’s words. “Does that mean you later came to your own conclusions as to why you received the invitation?”

“It does.” He hesitated. “But you must realize I’m only speculating as to why he wanted me there. I could be wrong, and the man is dead; he can’t defend himself.”

“We understand that.” The inspector nodded in encouragement.

“Fine. He invited me because he wanted to intimidate his wife,” Cochran declared. “But that’s only my opinion. McCourt neither said nor did anything to confirm my suspicions.”

“That’s a very odd assumption, Mr. Cochran.” Barnes stared at him expectantly.

“I know. Daniel had never invited me to his home, and he never would have done so without a reason. But it wasn’t until a day or so afterwards that I had an inkling of what he was hoping to accomplish. His wife had just inherited a fortune, and I’d heard that she was telling her friends she was taking control of the money. You must understand, under the terms of the original marriage settlement, Daniel had complete authority over the finances, but now she was to be the one in charge. But even then, it wasn’t until I walked in the front door and heard the two of them shouting at each other that I really understood.” He grimaced. “He wanted me there so she’d believe that he’d sent for me to consult with him. I drew up the original documents for the marriage settlement. I suspect the invitation was simply a ruse to frighten her into believing that there was something in that original document that might affect control of her new inheritance.”

“Is there?” Barnes asked curiously.

“Of course not.” Cochran laughed in derision. “But that’s the sort of stupid thinking that would have occurred to Daniel. He was a dreadfully bad solicitor and an equally bad husband. He’d bullied Elena Herron from the moment he’d married her, and now he was desperate to bully his way back into controlling her money.”

“What about the original marriage settlement?” Witherspoon said. “Wouldn’t he still control that money?”

“He would if there were any of it left. But between his collecting and bad investments, it’s gone. I’ve heard from a number of reliable sources that McCourt was broke. If he hadn’t been murdered, he’d have had to declare bankruptcy to pay his debts.”

 

Mrs. Goodge put a slice of her seedcake onto a plate and handed it to her guest. “Here you are Mollie. As I recall, you were always fond of seedcake.”

Mollie Dubay laughed. “And you always had a remarkably good memory.” She was a tall, gaunt, gray-haired woman with rough-hewn hands, broad shoulders, and a straight spine. She and Mrs. Goodge had once worked together in the same house, but she’d been sacked from her last position as a housekeeper to Lord Fremont and had now retired. She owned a small home in Colchester and took in lodgers to help make ends meet.

“I was so pleased to get your note, and as I was coming to London anyway, I decided to take you up on your kind offer. You were by far the best pastry chef I’d ever seen.” She forked up a bite of cake and popped it into her mouth. Her eyes closed in pleasure as she chewed. “You haven’t lost your touch. This is wonderful.”

“Why, thank you.” The cook beamed in pleasure. She hesitated for a brief moment, not sure how to proceed. She’d not invited Mollie here as a source, but as a friend. She’d sent Mollie the invitation to come for tea before they had a case. Her old colleague had gone through some tough times and had no family, and Christmas was often a hard season for people like her. Mrs. Goodge was so very grateful for her situation that she was mindful of those who’d spent their lives in service and ended up in their last years all alone. Mrs. Goodge knew that if she’d ended up anywhere but here, she’d be very much in the same situation as Mollie Dubay. “So, how many lodgers do you have?”

“Two ladies, Miss Kellogg and Miss Fields. They were both in service just as we were. They’re near our age and glad to have a decent place to live,” she explained. “I don’t charge very much, and I’m glad of the company.”