Mrs. Jeffries Defends Her Own (10 page)

“Why ever not?” the other girl asked.

“Because he’s a nasty old thing,” replied the first girl, who had blonde hair tucked up under a straw bonnet. “I worked in his house for six months, remember? The reason I left was because he was so awful.”

“Lots of masters are terrible, but they don’t get murdered,” the dark-haired girl scoffed. “You’re just pretendin’ to know more than you do.”

Phyllis kept her expression carefully blank as she poured her tea and added milk.

“I’m not,” she argued. “I told you when I left there that somethin’ terrible was goin’ to happen. You remember, I told you straight out that he’d come to a bad end. Even his own wife didn’t have much use for him.”

Phyllis added two lumps of sugar to her cup.

The dark-haired girl laughed harshly. “All I remember you sayin’ was that you were glad to get shut of the place because his yellin’ and screamin’ made you nervous.”

“That’s not true. But let’s not argue anymore. I want to enjoy my tea. By the way, did you know that Marion is sweet on that lad that works at the pub? I think she’s goin’ to be leavin’ soon and marryin’ him. Leastways that’s what she’s been hintin’.”

“Don’t believe her,” her friend shot back. “Marion thinks that any fellow that so much as gives her a polite smile is wantin’ to marry her.”

Phyllis sipped her tea and listened as the girls chatted. They didn’t discuss the murder again, and she couldn’t be sure that the murdered man the blonde girl had mentioned was Ronald Dearman, but she’d not heard of anyone else being murdered in the past few days.

“Hurry up and finish your tea,” the dark-haired girl ordered. “I’ve got to get back. Mrs. Collier has a fit if any of us are late from our afternoon out.”

Phyllis waved for the waiter. She paid her bill, grabbed her shopping basket, and left. Once outside, she studied her surroundings carefully, looking for a good hiding place. The best she could see was a recessed spot between two buildings across the street. She glanced over her shoulder and saw the two girls getting up and gathering their things. She darted across the road, dodging a hansom cab and a delivery wagon before stumbling across the pavement and into the nook.

The girls walked out of the tea shop and turned to their left. Phyllis waited for them to move farther down the pavement before she followed after them. She kept well
back as they turned off the crowded high street and onto Bruton Street. She trailed them down the road, around the corner, and onto another street until they stopped in front of a tall, redbrick Georgian house. They chatted for a few moments before the dark-haired girl waved good-bye and slipped down the side walkway to the servants’ door. The blonde girl started off again, and Phyllis went after her. When the girl turned another corner, Phyllis broke into a run. “Excuse me, miss,” she called as she caught up with her. “But could you stop a moment?”

The girl turned and stared at her suspiciously. “Weren’t you in the tea shop just now?”

“I was,” Phyllis admitted. “And that’s why I followed you. I’d like to speak with you.”

“What about?”

“About the man you used to work for.” She smiled and came closer. “Was his name Ronald Dearman?”

The girl crossed her arms over her chest. “Yeah, how’d you know?”

“Because it’s my job to know such things,” she declared boldly. Betsy would be so proud of her. “I work for a private inquiry agency, and we’ve been employed to look into the murder of Ronald Dearman. My name is Millie Barret.”

The girl’s eyes widened. “A private inquiry agent? But you’re a girl, a woman …”

“Women are as capable as men in most things,” she replied with a shrug. “And we’re better than most men when it comes to asking questions. Women notice details. I’ll bet that you noticed lots of details in your household that the master of the house didn’t see.”

The girl smiled. “I suppose you could say that. But I don’t see what I can tell you. I’ve not worked at the Dearman household in six months.”

Phyllis thought fast. “True, but you can tell me about his character.” She hoped she wasn’t wasting her time. What the girl said was true, she probably didn’t know anything that was useful to the murder investigation, but at least talking to her was better than showing up at their afternoon meeting empty-handed. “And if you’ll pardon my saying so, I couldn’t help but overhear the conversation you were having with your friend at the tea shop and you struck me as someone who is very observant and very intelligent. What’s your name?”

“Jean Snelling.” The girl smiled shyly. “And I don’t have to be back for another hour or so, so I guess it wouldn’t hurt to have a bit of a chat.”

“Thank you.” Phyllis smiled in return. “I noticed there was a park with benches just up the street. If it’s not too cold for you, we could go there.”

“It is cold,” Jean said thoughtfully. “Better yet, there’s a pub up the road as well. Let’s go there and you can buy me a drink for my trouble.”

Five minutes later, Phyllis was sitting at a corner table in the Royal Oak Pub and trying her best not to stare wide eyed at her surroundings. There was a large mirror behind the bar and a barman in a clean apron and a decent white shirt. Two customers, both of them middle-aged men in business suits, stood at the counter, and a well-dressed matron with a footman in tow occupied one of the other tables. An elderly gentleman smoking a pipe sat on the bench closest to the door.

“Now, what do you want to know?” Jean asked.

Phyllis turned her attention to her companion. “Anything you can tell me about the Dearmans,” she said. She felt incredibly brave—she was in a pub, a real pub. She’d marched right up to the bar and ordered two glasses of gin just as if she’d done it every day of her life.

Jean wrinkled her nose in thought. “There’s not much to tell.”

“When we were at the tea shop, I overheard you telling your friend that you weren’t surprised someone had killed him,” she reminded her.

“That’s true. He was a right nasty fellow, and I don’t think anyone, even his wife, will be sheddin’ many tears at his funeral.”

“How long did you work there?”

“A year and a half,” she replied. “Then I found another position. He was so angry that I was leavin’ he didn’t want to give me a reference, but Mrs. Dearman was decent and she gave me one. Mind you, she was used to it, they couldn’t keep help. People usually left as soon as they could find another place to go. Between the horrid rations they fed us and their fightin’, no one wanted to live in that house.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Dearman fought a lot.”

“Like cats and dogs.” Jean grinned. “He hated the fact that she wasn’t scared of him.”

“What did they argue about?” Phyllis picked up her drink and forced herself to take a sip. The stuff tasted bitter and it took all her willpower not to make a face.

“Mostly money.” Jean took another drink. “Mrs. Dearman used to get furious at him over the household expenses. She claimed that he didn’t give her enough to
run the house properly, and there was some truth to that. He was miserly with food and heat. Mind you, he always said that he’d give her more if she would tell her skinflint brother to increase his salary. That would really set her off.”

“How?” Phyllis asked. She forced another sip down her throat.

“You don’t look like you’re enjoyin’ that.” Jean nodded toward her drink. “If you don’t want it, I’ll have it.”

Phyllis handed her the gin. “I don’t really like to drink.”

“I do.” She laughed. “And the mistress is gone today, so no one will notice if I come home a bit happy.”

“You were telling me about the arguments between Mr. and Mrs. Dearman,” Phyllis reminded her.

“Oh, they fought over everything. He even resented her having her friend over for supper.”

“What friend?” Phyllis thought she was losing control of this conversation.

“Mrs. Meadows. She and Mrs. Dearman are as thick as thieves,” Jean replied. “And Mr. Dearman didn’t much like her and didn’t bother to hide how he felt about her.”

“Why did he dislike her?”

She took another gulp. “He complained that Mrs. Meadows was always stirring things up, and he was right about that. She’d come to the house every afternoon for tea, and the two of them would sit together and complain about their husbands and how if they had it to do over, neither of them would ever get married. By the time Mr. Dearman come home in the evenings, she’d be so riled she’d lay right into him the second he walked in the door. It was always the same thing as well, money.”

“But surely Mr. Dearman made a decent salary if
he was working for his wife’s brother,” Phyllis commented.

“Not according to him.” Jean laughed. “But every time he brought the subject up, she’d say he wouldn’t have a job without her brother and that she’d brought plenty of money to their marriage and all he’d come with was a half-rotted cottage in some ugly village in Essex. Those were her exact words. He’d get furious and stomp out of the house. I think she taunted him on purpose so he’d leave.”

“So he got through all the money in her marriage settlement,” Phyllis mused.

Jean knocked back the last of the gin and slapped the glass down on the tabletop.

“Would you like another?” Phyllis asked.

“That’s very generous of you.” Jean picked up her glass and waved at the barman. “Thanks ever so much.”

“Everyone was quite surprised when she took care of him herself,” Edwina Hawkins said to Ruth. “But to her credit, she did. She wouldn’t have a nurse in the house.”

They stood in the cloakroom of the meeting hall where the March meeting of the London Society for Women’s Suffrage had concluded fifteen minutes earlier. Ruth had spoken to several women about the murder, and she’d heard an interesting story about Ronald Dearman. Edwina Hawkins had overheard the exchange, and being the gossip that she was, she’d followed her into the cloakroom. Edwina Hawkins lived next door to Antonia Meadows, Lucretia Dearman’s friend.

Ruth was in a hurry to get back to Upper Edmonton
Gardens, but she didn’t want to be rude, so she nodded encouragingly as Edwina rambled on.

“It was sad,” Edwina continued. “Thaddeus Meadows wasn’t a very nice man, he was barely civil if you happened to see him outside, and he certainly didn’t let her spend any money. The poor woman had to account for every penny she spent on the household. They couldn’t keep help, you know. Not that she had much, but he did allow her to have a housemaid and a cook. Now that he’s gone, she lets both of them stop work at five every day even though they live in. There’s been grumbling in the neighborhood about that—some of my neighbors are afraid that their own servants will be agitating to get off early. But I don’t think that’s going to be the case. Mrs. Meadows still doesn’t pay very well, and that’s the reason she’s so lenient with their work hours.”

“How did he die?” Ruth turned and pulled her cloak off the peg behind her.

“He had pneumonia,” Edwina said eagerly. “The doctor had been there and it appeared that he was getting better, but then he took a turn for the worse and died. I felt sorry for Mrs. Meadows, but you know, even now that he’s gone, she’s still quite thrifty. Her umbrella broke last week and instead of buying a new one, she gave it to one of those door-to-door tinkers to mend. But then again, once you learn economical habits, they die hard, don’t they? The tinker brought it back while she was out, so he banged on my door and I took it for her.”

“She is lucky to have a kind neighbor like you,” Ruth murmured. She was very disappointed.

“Thank you, Lady Cannonberry, but that’s not what
I mean. She was lucky because if the tinker had been a minute later, I’d not have been home. It was our executive committee meeting at Mrs. Parsons’ and you know what a stickler for punctuality she can be, and as it happened, none of my servants were home that afternoon, either. I’d given them the afternoon off because the painters had done the downstairs hall.”

“It’s called the Nazareth Sugar Cookie,” Mrs. Goodge said as she set a plate of fragrant, golden-baked disks next to the teapot. “The recipe is from Pennsylvania.” She smiled at Luty as she spoke. “I thought it might be nice for us to try them out.”

Wiggins, his expression skeptical, reached for one. He took a bite, chewed, swallowed, and grinned. “Cor blimey, these are good. You can make them for me anytime you want,” he said. “Are you goin’ to feed them to your sources?”

“I’m not sure. I made these because I had a bit of vanilla I wanted to use up and I thought Luty might enjoy a treat from her homeland.”

“Thank you, that’s right thoughtful of ya.” Luty reached for a cookie.

“But I’m not sure about feedin’ them to my sources,” the cook continued. “Some people don’t like to try new
things. I need them to be comfortable and willin’ to talk.” She took her seat at the table. “I’ve had no luck today, but I can see that the rest of you seem to be in good spirits.”

Mrs. Jeffries helped herself to a cookie. “If no one objects, I’ll go first. I had quite an interesting meeting with Fiona. She gave me the names of several people who either disliked Dearman intensely or who’d had substantial problems because of him.” She took a quick bite and paused briefly to see if anyone objected. When no one did, she went on. “Umh … this is wonderful.” She licked her lips. “Rather sweet, but it has a lovely flavor. Apparently, Dearman disliked his wife’s friend, Antonia Meadows, resented the other deputy director, Henry Anson, and had sacked at least two people in the past six months. Fiona didn’t know the exact date the accounting clerk, James Tremlett, was let go, but it was within the last two weeks.”