Mrs. Jeffries and the Mistletoe Mix-Up (27 page)

Lydia Kent sat on the sofa. “Thank you, Wang,” she said. “I’ll call if I need you.”

“Very good, ma’am,” he replied. He bowed politely to the two men and then disappeared through one of the doors on the far side of the room.

“Come and have some coffee, gentlemen,” she offered. She gestured at the two chairs, indicating they should sit down, and then picked up the coffeepot. “I’ve just had it sent up, and it’s a cold day outside.”

Witherspoon’s stomach lurched, but he nodded agreeably as he and Barnes sat down across from her. The lift ride had been bad enough, and he didn’t like coffee, but she was being gracious, so he’d do his best not to be sick all over the carpet.

“Is that gentleman your personal servant?” Barnes asked.

“He is. A woman traveling alone needs protection, and some countries frown on carrying guns, so I have Wang. He’s been with me for years. Constable, do you take cream and sugar?”

“Both, ma’am.”

She fixed his coffee and then looked at Witherspoon. “Inspector?”

“I’ll have the same, Miss Kent,” he said. “This is very nice of you. Most of our witnesses don’t offer any refreshment.”

She put two lumps of sugar and poured a hefty measure of cream into his coffee. “It’s my pleasure, Inspector.” She handed him his cup and looked at him expectantly. “What brings you here today? More questions?”

“There are always more questions, ma’am,” Witherspoon said.

“When we were here before, you mentioned something to the effect that the dealer who sold you the sword had other offers.” Barnes frowned, trying to recall her exact words.

“That’s correct.” She sipped her coffee. “And all three of them were for more money than I paid. But as I said, Constable, I was there with cash in hand, and in Hong Kong, that always beats a paper promise.”

“Did the seller happen to mention who else had made offers?” Barnes took a drink. He loved coffee, and this was particularly good.

She looked askance and then gave a slight shrug. “I can’t imagine what that has to do with Daniel McCourt’s murder, but I suppose you’ve a reason for asking.”

“I do,” he assured her, though in truth, he’d no idea why Mrs. Jeffries felt the identity of the other potential buyers might be important. Yet her instincts and ideas hadn’t failed them yet.

“I bought the weapon from Park Jin Jae, a well-known antiquities dealer from Pyongyang,” she said slowly, as though she were trying to recall the encounter. “Let me see . . . It’s been some time since I bought it, but I do remember Mr. Park commenting that he’d received telegrams from a client in Berlin and that a museum in New York had expressed an interest in acquiring it.”

“No one from London?” Barnes pressed.

She started to shake her head and then caught herself. “It wasn’t exactly from London, but he said that he’d received a visit from Mr. Thomas Mak of Mak and Hartley, who was acting on behalf of a client in England. He said his client was definitely interested in the sword, but he wasn’t authorized to make an offer. He’d only just heard the weapon was on the market and had sent a telegram to London. But, of course, by then, I’d already bought it.”

Witherspoon glanced at Barnes to make sure he was finished. He wasn’t certain why the constable was asking these specific questions, but he knew there must be a very good reason. The constable nodded, leaned back in his chair, and sipped his coffee with apparent pleasure. “We’d like your help in clearing up a matter,” the inspector said. “There’s a discrepancy between the statement you gave us and Mrs. McCourt’s account regarding payment for the sword.”

“A discrepancy,” she repeated. “I don’t understand. I answered all your questions truthfully.”

“I’m sure this is just a simple misunderstanding,” he replied. “Miss Kent, you said you went to the McCourt home on the day of the murder in order to get your money.”

“That’s correct.” She grimaced. “And unfortunately, I’m now stuck in the position of asking either for the sword to be returned or for Mrs. McCourt to give me five thousand pounds. I imagine the poor widow is quite distraught over her husband’s death, but I can’t stay in London much longer. My friends are waiting in Paris.”

“We’ve spoken to Mrs. McCourt about the matter, and she insists she saw the bill of sale for the Hwando and it was marked ‘paid in full.’ ”

“Hwando?” She cocked her head to one side and stared at him in confusion. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“The Hwando sword,” he explained. “The one that was used to kill him. Mrs. McCourt has a bill of sale.”

She smiled slowly. “Inspector, I’m not sure what you’re talking about, but I assure you, I didn’t sell Daniel McCourt a Hwando. I sold him an extremely rare thirteenth-century sword from the Goryeo dynasty.”

 

Everyone was early for the afternoon meeting, which didn’t sit well with the cook. “These scones need to cool for a few more minutes,” she complained as she put them on the table. “It’s only gone four fifteen! I wasn’t expectin’ to see any of you back here until half past. What if I’d had a source in the kitchen? Would you have barged right in then?”

“Don’t be cross, Mrs. Goodge. It’s too cold to ’ang about outside.” Wiggins licked his lips as he stared at the plate. “And butter meltin’ off them nice, warm scones is a rare treat.”

Mollified, the cook laughed. “You can always get round me by complimentin’ my bakin’. Go on, then, sit down and have at it. But if you burn your tongue don’t come whinin’ to me.”

“They smell wonderful.” Phyllis slipped into her chair. “And I’ll admit right off that I didn’t have much luck today.” She spoke quickly, trying to get all the words out, because once again, she felt like she’d failed them. “I’m so sorry, but I couldn’t do what you asked me. I couldn’t find any sign of my source. I spent hours lingerin’ about the area. I’m so sorry. I know you were countin’ on me.”

The room went silent as everyone reacted to the panic in her voice. Luty, who happened to be walking past, stopped and patted her on the shoulder. “Now, don’t be silly, girl. You’ve done your fair share.” She continued on to her chair. “Just because you had a bad day don’t mean you didn’t do yer best. We all have times when we don’t have much luck.”

“Don’t feel bad, Miss Phyllis.” Hatchet swept past and pulled out his elderly employer’s chair. “I wasn’t able to accomplish my task, either, and I’m certainly not going to apologize. We do the best we can, and that’s that.”

“Sometimes you get lucky, Phyllis.” Smythe gave her a cheeky grin as he flopped down next to his wife and scooped the baby up into his arms. “And sometimes you don’t. I’m not goin’ to find out much if my source doesn’t come through tonight.”

“Phyllis, no one expects perfection,” Mrs. Jeffries explained gently. “All we ask is that we do our best, and I know that’s what you’ve done. Now, let’s get the meeting started.” She could tell that Phyllis was overwhelmed by the attention, so the kindest thing to do was move along. “Smythe, you had the most difficult task, so would you care to go first?”

Smythe lifted Amanda and kissed her forehead. “My source said ’e can find out what we need to know, but ’e couldn’t do it as fast as we’d like. I’m goin’ to go back out after supper tonight”—he gave Betsy a quick, apologetic glance—“but even then ’e couldn’t guarantee ’e’d be able to give us an answer.”

“Let’s hope he can come through for us. Come back here afterwards,” Mrs. Jeffries instructed. “Mrs. Goodge and I will wait up for you.”

“It’ll be awfully late,” he warned.

“I can wait up, too,” Wiggins said.

“You need your rest, lad,” the cook interjected. “We don’t need as much sleep as you young people. If it’s all the same, I’d like to say my bit now. I know I wasn’t assigned a task like the rest of you, but I did find out that McCourt went to see a doctor at the end of November, so I think he must have known he was very ill.”

“Well done, Mrs. Goodge.” Mrs. Jeffries gazed at her with admiration. “How on earth did you learn that?”

“It was easy.” She grinned. “An old colleague of mine dropped by today. Doris Atherton, she’s the one that used to work for Dorian Kettering,” she said, referring to a suspect in one of their previous cases. “Well, she read about the McCourt murder, and when she saw his address, she realized the murder was in the inspector’s district. She’s a sharp one, is Doris, so she stopped in to tell me that McCourt had been to see this doctor on Harley Street. Her cousin is housekeeper to the doctor—that’s how she found out. Mind you, she only dropped in because of the coincidence of the whole thing, not because she thought his goin’ to the doctor had anythin’ to do with the murder.”

“But still, even if he knew he was ill, who would he tell?” Betsy said. “I’ve been thinking about it, and it seems to me his relationship with his wife was so bad he’d not confide in her, and no one else seems to have liked the man, so it’s doubtful he had any friends.”

“What a sad and pathetic life he had,” Ruth said.

“He certainly did,” Mrs. Jeffries agreed. “But even the most miserable of people want to talk with someone when they’ve had bad news. It’s only human nature to want to tell someone of a health condition. Everyone needs sympathy.”

“Maybe he was one of the few that didn’t,” Luty said. “But I’ve never met anyone who didn’t love jawin’ about their aches and pains till the cows come home. Anyways, if Mrs. Goodge is finished, I’ll go next.”

“That’s all I have.”

“I found out that a man bribed a waiter at the Alexandria to find out when Lydia Kent was originally supposed to leave London.” She gave Hatchet a quick, triumphant grin. “And I did it without Lucille Fenwick. This waiter didn’t know who the man was, and he’d never seen him before, but he was reportedly well dressed, tall, and had thinnin’ light brown hair.”

“That sounds like a description of Leon Brunel,” Ruth said.

Luty nodded vigorously. “That’s who I think it was, and that means he thought that Lydia Kent was leavin’ the day before the tea party.”

“Did you find out anything else?” Mrs. Jeffries asked.

“Nope, that’s it, but I think I done pretty danged good.” She gave Hatchet a smug smile.

“Alright, madam.” Hatchet gave an exasperated sigh. “I’m a man of my word, and you have indeed been worthy of this challenge. I, unfortunately, have not, and running into the inspector and Constable Barnes meant that I couldn’t pursue any other avenues of inquiry.” He held up his hand as everyone began to speak at once. “Don’t worry, madam handled the matter perfectly, and the inspector wasn’t the least bit suspicious.”

“That’s a relief,” the housekeeper said. “Who would like to go next?”

“I’ll go,” Wiggins offered. He told them about his excursion to the passageway next to the McCourt home. “But the fence between the two passageways is a good seven feet tall,” he said. “After that, I got right lucky and found a servant from the house, but she didn’t ’ave any idea if Mrs. McCourt knew about ’er husband’s illness, and when I asked ’er if he’d been sick or anything like that, she said she didn’t know that, either. But what she did know was that the sword that killed McCourt ’as been in his study for at least three weeks and maybe even four,” he finished.

“But I thought that was the sword McCourt bought from Miss Kent?” Ruth said. “The one he was making such a fuss about at the tea party.”

“That’s what we all thought,” Mrs. Jeffries said. “But then I realized that no one had actually verified that specific detail and that it might be important. Would you like to go next?”

Ruth smiled thinly. “I’m afraid the only thing I found out was something we already know: Leon Brunel is a fanatical collector and has the reputation of doing anything, including some very disreputable things, to obtain what he wants. I had lunch with Lydia Mortmain today, and she told me a very interesting story. She’d heard that last year, Brunel had actually disabled a rival collector’s carriage so he couldn’t get to an estate sale in Kent. Apparently, some very rare Buddhist statues were on the auction block, and Brunel was determined to get them and succeeded.”

“How did he disable a carriage?” Mrs. Goodge asked curiously.

“I’m afraid Lydia didn’t have the details. I’m sorry.” She smiled at Mrs. Jeffries. “I know that’s not what you wanted me to learn, but that was the best I could do. Lydia was the only person I managed to speak to today, and she’d never heard the story about McCourt proposing under the mistletoe. I didn’t have time to contact my other sources to see if any of them had heard the tale.”

“Don’t concern yourself, Ruth.” Mrs. Jeffries hid her disappointment behind a smile. One of the pillars supporting her theory was that the story of McCourt’s romantic Christmas proposal under a sprig of mistletoe was well known and oft repeated. Thus far, that didn’t seem to be the case. “Your task was difficult.”

 

“If you’ll wait a moment, I’ll tell Mrs. McCourt that you’re here,” Haines said to Witherspoon. “She’s in the drawing room with Mr. Brunel.”

“Mr. Leon Brunel?” Barnes clarified. He didn’t think she would be having tea with Arthur, but it never hurt to make sure.

“Correct, sir.” Haines disappeared down the hall.

“I wonder what Leon Brunel is doing here,” the inspector muttered in a low voice.

“McCourt was his cousin. Maybe he’s here to help her with the funeral arrangements.”

Witherspoon shook his head. “I don’t think there’s any love lost between Mrs. McCourt and Leon Brunel. As a matter of fact, I got the distinct impression she thoroughly disliked him.”

Haines reappeared. “Mrs. McCourt will see you now. Would you care for tea?”

Witherspoon’s stomach still hadn’t recovered from the coffee. “No, thank you, we’re fine. We’ve just had some refreshment.”

“Very good, sir.” Haines held the door open and then closed it quietly behind them.

Elena McCourt was sitting by the fireplace and was dressed in a dark sapphire blue day dress. Leon Brunel was in the chair next to her. Witherspoon gave the room a fast but thorough survey. He noted she’d closed the huge sliding doors that separated the drawing room from the study, but the Christmas tree was still in the corner, and garlands of greenery still draped the mantel. There was no sign that this was a house in mourning.