Mrs. Jeffries and the Mistletoe Mix-Up (30 page)

Alarmed, both policemen went after her, intent on putting themselves between her and her angry husband.

“What do you want to know?” She whirled around and flattened herself against the closed doors, her gaze fastened on her husband’s face. “Ask me, ask me. I’ll tell you what you want to know. I won’t lie to protect him.”

“Did your husband leave the house on the night that McCourt was murdered?” Barnes blurted out as he and Witherspoon planted themselves protectively in front of her.

“He did, and when he came home, I saw him carrying a long, flat case up to the attic.” She pointed up the stairs. “I’ll show you. I’ll show you where he put it.”

“Good God, woman, what kind of wife are you?” Leon hurled himself in her direction, but Barnes and Witherspoon were ready for him. They caught him by the shoulders and then dragged him back toward the front door by his arms. By this time he was screaming at the top of his lungs, and the housekeeper came charging into the foyer. “Run and get the constable on the corner,” Barnes ordered as they tightened their grip on the struggling man. “Use the servants’ door,” he commanded, because they now had Brunel pinned up against the front door. She turned and fled.

“He hid something up in the attic.” Glenda looked at Witherspoon as she spoke.

“Did you see him do it on the night McCourt died?” The inspector gasped the words out. He used his body to pin Brunel to the door, and he could see that Barnes was straining to hold the fellow as well.

“No, but he goes up there every day.” She laughed. “He locked the door, but that didn’t keep me out.”

“Of course it wouldn’t, you wretched little sneak!” Brunel yelled. He jerked his left shoulder and almost succeeded in dislodging Barnes. “You’re good at sneaking, aren’t you? That’s all you’re good at, you slut.”

“There’s a sword up there,” she continued calmly, as if he hadn’t spoken. “It’s in a flat case and is very ugly. But he strokes it and fondles it like a lover.”

“You stupid cow! You’ve ruined me!” Leon screamed at his wife. “I’ve given you everything, and this is how you repay me. I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you!”

Barnes grimaced. He didn’t know how much longer he could hold on, and he wished Mrs. Brunel would shut up, because every time she hurled an insult at her husband, it enraged him so that he doubled his efforts to get away.

Footsteps pounded up the corridor, and two constables suddenly appeared and raced over to the front door to relieve them of their burden. “We’ve got him now,” one of them said as he pulled Brunel’s arms behind his back and slapped on the cuffs. “Are you alright, sir?”

“We’re fine.” Witherspoon could barely gasp out the words, he was so tired.

Brunel suddenly broke away from the constable and hurled himself at his wife. “I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you!”

“No, you won’t.” Glenda straightened away from the door.

“You’re going to hang, and I’m going to have all your money.”

“I wonder if they’re there yet,” Luty remarked to no one in particular. Ruth, Betsy, Phyllis, Mrs. Jeffries, and Mrs. Goodge sat around the kitchen table and waited. Smythe, Wiggins, and Hatchet had gone to the Brunel house to surreptitiously keep watch. They promised to return immediately if there was an arrest made.

“They had to go to the McCourt house first,” Mrs. Jeffries replied. “Then they’ll go to Leon and Glenda Brunel’s residence.”

“And let’s hope that you’re right,” the cook said to the housekeeper. “Otherwise, the inspector is goin’ to end up with egg on his face.”

“’Course she’s right,” Luty declared. “And it ain’t her fault that everythin’ rests on the misery of a wife and the piece of pine mulch in the attic.”

Betsy suddenly turned her head toward the back door. “The men are back.”

“Brunel was arrested!” Wiggins yelped as they came into the kitchen. “And lucky for the inspector that we was ’angin’ about the house, otherwise Brunel might’ve made a run for it.”

“Tell us everythin’,” Luty demanded.

The three of them peeled off coats and scarves, caps and gloves, as they crossed to the coat tree before moving to the table. Hatchet popped his elegant black top hat on the sideboard then proceeded to his usual spot.

“I’ll get more cups.” Betsy leapt up, gave her husband a quick kiss, and hurried to the cupboard.

“Is the babe alright?” he asked.

“She’s fine,” Betsy said.

“She’s havin’ a late nap in my room,” the cook told him. “Now, you boys sit down and we’ll pour you some tea, then you can tell us what happened.”

For the next few moments, the kitchen was silent save for the scraping of chairs and the clink of china as they took their seats and got their tea. Finally, when everyone had settled, Mrs. Jeffries said, “Now, who wants to start?”

“I’ll do the honors,” Hatchet offered. “As instructed, we went to the Brunel house to keep an eye out should anything untoward develop. Wiggins and I stayed in the front, and Smythe very kindly volunteered to watch the back and servants’ entrance on the side.”

“We wanted to make sure we ’ad the doors covered just in case ’e tried to scarper off,” Smythe clarified.

“Excellent idea. If he attempted such a thing, you could have followed him to see where he went,” Ruth added, nodding approvingly.

“Now, as you know, it’s a very posh area, and the Brunel home is quite close to the commercial district,” Hatchet continued. “That’s a pertinent point, as you will see when we get further into our story.”

“Oh, git on with it,” Luty cried. “We’re on pins and needles here.”

“If you’ll quit interrupting, madam,” he scolded, “I’ll do just that. Now, as I was saying, we had the doors covered properly, and Wiggins had pointed out the location of the nearest constable. He was stationed just around the corner from the Brunel home by the shops. We’d taken our places, so we had a good view of the premises.”

“Where did you hide?” Mrs. Goodge asked.

“We didn’t really hide, per se,” Hatchet replied. “We walked up and down the street. There were a lot of people going to and fro to the shops, so no one noticed us. Wiggins was on one side of the road, and I was on the other.”

“I dodged behind a postbox when the inspector’s hansom cab pulled up,” Wiggins added cheerfully. “Oh, sorry, Hatchet. Go on with the tellin’.”

“We saw the inspector and Constable Barnes go inside, and we waited. A few moments later, Wiggins waved for me to join him. I did, and we could hear raised voices coming from the Brunel house.”

“They were yellin’ loud enough to wake the dead,” Wiggins corrected.

“Yes, yes, that’s true, they were very loud,” Hatchet said impatiently. “At that point, we decided we’d best get help. We didn’t wish to barge in and give ourselves away unless we’d no choice in the matter, so Wiggins dashed off to alert the constable on the corner.”

“I ran up and told him I could hear screamin’ comin’ from the house and I thought maybe a burglar was breakin’ in.” The footman laughed at his own cleverness. “’E took off like a shot, blowin’ ’is whistle so that another constable come runnin’, and the two of them flew like the devil toward the house. Just then, the housekeeper come out screamin’ that the policemen were inside and they needed ’elp. By this time the inspector and Barnes were scufflin’ with Brunel, and from the sounds comin’ from inside the house, ’e was puttin’ up a real fight.”

Ruth gasped. “Is Gerald alright? Is he hurt?”

“And Barnes—is he in one piece?” the cook demanded.

“They’re both fine,” Hatchet said. “When we heard the noise, we were alarmed as well, and I must say, we’d have probably intervened if the constables hadn’t reached the house so quickly. We were very apprehensive until we saw them bringing Brunel out in handcuffs.” Hatchet laughed. “Of course, we weren’t completely reassured as to the inspector and the constable’s safety until Smythe appeared and reported that he’d peeked in the drawing room window and both our policemen were fine.”

“They were talkin’ to Mrs. Brunel,” Smythe explained. “Mind you, the inspector’s hat was off and his hair was mussed up, and the constable’s helmet was gone, but they didn’t look too much worse for the wear.”

“Thank goodness.” Ruth sighed in relief. “Sometimes we forget how dangerous catching murderers can be.”

Smythe eyed the housekeeper speculatively. “Right, it’s your turn now, Mrs. Jeffries. ’Ow did you suss it out?”

“I wasn’t sure I was going to figure this one out at all,” she admitted with a laugh. “For one thing, so many people had a reason to want McCourt dead. Arthur Brunel hated him for cheating him out of what he considered his proper share of their father’s estate, and even though it had happened three years earlier, it was only now that Arthur was forced to turn his home into flats in order to keep a roof over his head.”

“And it doesn’t take much to spark an old hatred,” Betsy murmured.

“Not only that, but McCourt was going to sue Brunel,” the housekeeper continued.

“But didn’t Mrs. McCourt confirm that her husband didn’t have the money to do it?” Phyllis said. “And the solicitor told the inspector he wasn’t goin’ to do any more work on Brunel’s behalf without payment.”

“True,” Mrs. Jeffries agreed. “And to some extent, that meant Arthur could be eliminated as a suspect. I eliminated Charles Cochran as well. There was no evidence he’d had much to do with McCourt since he’d handled the marriage settlement fifteen years earlier, and they didn’t appear to have any sort of personal relationship. Which left Mrs. McCourt, Jerome Raleigh, Nicholas Saxon, or Glenda Brunel.”

“All four of them had a motive,” the cook declared. “I’m includin’ the wife, too. Just because she had money now didn’t mean she’d stopped hatin’ him. But tell me, what made you think of Leon Brunel? He’s the only one who didn’t have a reason to want his cousin dead.”

“Oh, but he did. Greed. The more we learned of his character, the more I realized there was something almost evil about his need to keep acquiring things,” she said. “He’d do anything to get what he wanted . . .”

“Like disabling a carriage so a rival couldn’t bid at an estate sale,” Ruth added eagerly. “My goodness, Lydia Mortmain wasn’t exaggerating; that story is probably true.”

“And Brunel wanted the best Oriental antiquities collection in England.” Mrs. Jeffries helped herself to more tea. “But his motive didn’t become clear until the very end, when I realized that the weapon that killed him hadn’t necessarily been the one that Lydia Kent had brought from Hong Kong. Once I had confirmation that the sword she sold him wasn’t the Hwando, but something even rarer and more valuable, a thirteenth-century Goryeo dynasty weapon, then the other pieces all made sense.”

“What other pieces?” Phyllis asked plaintively. “I’m sorry, but I still don’t see how you knew it was him.”

“First of all, there was Annie’s evidence,” she said. “Annie claimed that she chipped the Chinese plate because McCourt startled her when he came in and that he was carrying a big, flat case. Then I kept remembering what Saxon told the inspector. He said that from the way McCourt was behaving at the tea party, he’d thought they were going to see something unusual and rare.”

“But the Hwando is valuable, so it could have been that they were goin’ to see,” Luty pointed out.

“But not particularly rare unless it had been used by one of the great Joseon dynasty kings,” Mrs. Jeffries replied. “Saxon made a point of that, and he also made a comment about ancient swords that led me to think that the local antiquities community must have heard there was one on the market.”

“What about the fire?” Ruth asked. “Did he deliberately set it?”

“I’m sure he did,” she replied. “Once he knew that McCourt had the sword, he only had a few days to come up with a way to get it from him. He had to get everyone out of the house for a few moments so he could steal the sword. He knew that McCourt would never sell it to him. The Christmas tea was a perfect opportunity.”

“So ’e set the place on fire?” Wiggins frowned. “’E took an awful risk. What if they’d continued on with the tea?”

“He made sure they wouldn’t.” She glanced at Phyllis. “Harriet told you that she was frightened she’d get the sack because there had been petty theft in the house.”

“That’s right, the saffron and some lamp oil from the storage room,” she replied. “She was accused of the spice theft because she forgot to give the housekeeper the keys the cook had borrowed.”

“But she only had those keys because the cook’s had gone missing. I think Leon Brunel had taken them to get at the spice cupboard. The saffron hadn’t been stolen; it had been dumped on the floor in the larder,” Mrs. Jeffries said. “Here’s what I surmise must have happened: Brunel knew he had to get the tea party guests outside so he could not only do the murder but also get the sword. He stole the cook’s keys and took the lamp oil and the saffron jar, but he wasn’t interested in the spice, so he tossed it out.”

“Then why’d he take the jar?” Mrs. Goodge asked.