Mrs. Jeffries Stands Corrected (7 page)

“Nice?” The lad snorted in disbelief. “I never said that! He was a right mean ol’ bastard. Most folks round these parts couldn’t stand him. But he does serve decent ale. I heard his new place is right posh, not like here. Peeked in through the windows last evenin’, but I didn’t go in or anythin’.”

They were sitting in the public bar of the Pale Swan, another pub owned by the late Haydon Dapeers. It was an ordinary public house with white-painted walls, hardwood floors and high beamed ceilings. Wiggins rather liked it.

“How come people didn’t like ’im?” Wiggins asked. He dug in his pocket, pulled out a few coins and nodded to the barman, signaling they’d like another round. Cor, he didn’t think Mrs. Jeffries would much like him drinkin’ all this beer, not while he was askin’ questions. But it was bloomin’ ’ot outside and the only way he could get anyone to tell ’im anything was by buyin’ ’em a drink.

The barman brought them two more light ales. “Drink up, lads,” he said genially, scooping up the coins and moving on down the half-empty bar.

“This is right nice of ya,” Dick said, grabbing his glass and taking a huge gulp.

“Got nothin’ else to do today. Might as well ’ave a beer or two, seein’ as it’s so ’ot outside,” Wiggins replied. “Now, you were tellin’ me about Haydon Dapeers not bein’ so popular round ’ere.”

“It’s no surprise ’e got murdered.” Dick glanced quickly around the room. “He ’ad plenty of enemies, that’s for sure.”

“Who?”

“His own brother, for starters,” Dick replied with relish. “I know that for a fact, ’cause Tom Dapeers give me a job moving the empty barrels in the taproom. This was yesterday morning, it was. While I was in there Haydon Dapeers showed up at their pub and they had the most awful dustup.”

“They ’ad a fight?”

“Nah.” Dick laughed. “Dapeers weren’t the type to use his fists. It were an argument. But I ’eard Mr. Tom screamin’ at Dapeers that it was all a ruddy lie, and if he
tried spreadin’ it around, he’d see Dapeers in court.”

Wiggins nodded thoughtfully. “What was they on about?”

Dick shrugged. “Don’t know. I only heard part of the row. Then Mrs. Tom come in and Haydon left. But I don’t reckon it means anything. Mr. Tom and Mr. Haydon didn’t act much like brothers, if you know what I mean. They couldn’t really stick each other. Mrs. Joanne, she really ’ated Mr. Haydon. Especially when she found out he was goin’ to be openin’ that fancy pub right up the road from their place. She went on and on about it. Claimed Mr. Haydon were doin’ it on purpose just to ruin their trade. Mind you”—Dick took another quick drink and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand—“if you ask me, she was dead right. Mr. Haydon probably was tryin’ to ruin their business.”

“Guess the brother and his missus didn’t get invited to the opening of the Gilded Lily.” Wiggins laughed.

“That’s the strange part,” Dick said eagerly. “They did. I saw ’em walkin’ right into the Gilded Lily yesterday evenin’. Mrs. Joanne was all dressed up like she was goin’ to the opera or somethin’, and Mr. Tom was wearin’ a suit and tie.”

“It’s a wonder Haydon Dapeers didn’t toss ’em out.”

“That’s what I thought,” Dick said eagerly. “I was sure I’d see them come right back out again. ’Corse I was curious, so I had a gander through the window, you know, lookin’ to see if Dapeers would boot ’em out. Well, I saw him talkin’ to them all nice like, as though the argument at the Black Horse had never happened.”

“That’s right strange,” Wiggins said thoughtfully. “Guess they musta made it up.”

Dick shrugged again. “Reckon so. Either that, or Mr. Tom and his wife was so eager to see the inside of the
place, they were willin’ to swallow their pride.”

Wiggins belched softly. “Sounds like an awful lot of trouble to go to just to get a look at the place,” he mused. “Why didn’t they just look in the windows while the pub was bein’ fitted out?”

Dick laughed. “Oh, you wouldna seen nothin’. Mr. Haydon kept the windows covered in brown paper the whole time the work was bein’ done on it.”

Wiggins took another swallow of beer, grimacing as the brew slipped down his throat. He felt awfully dizzy. He glanced down at his feet and thought the floor looked a long ways away. When he looked up again, Dick’s twin brother seemed to be sitting right next to Dick. Even worse, the room was starting to spin.

Betsy studied the young man behind the counter of the grocer shop on Tottenham Road. He wasn’t very attractive. He looked the sort of man who would be flattered by a little attention. Short and rather portly with a head of frizzy dark hair and skin so pale it reminded her of a fish’s belly, he wore thick, wire-rimmed spectacles that couldn’t quite hide his bushy eyebrows and a rumpled white shirt beneath his grocer’s apron. She ignored the jab at her conscience because she was being so cold-bloodedly deliberate in picking her choice of prey. But there was a murder to solve. “Excuse me, sir.” She smiled warmly. “But I was wondering if I might trouble you a moment?”

He blinked at her from behind his spectacles, as though he was surprised she was speaking to him. “Uh, of course, miss. What can I do for you?”

“Do you know where the Dapeers residence might be?”

“We’re not allowed to give out that sort of thing about our customers,” he said, blushing all the way to the roots of his hair.

“Oh,” she sighed dramatically. “That’s too bad. My mistress wanted me to take a letter of condolence around to Mrs. Dapeers, but I’ve lost the address.”

“Terrible business, that,” the clerk said.

“Yes.” She shuddered delicately. “Dreadful, isn’t it? Imagine being stabbed in your own pub.”

“And on the opening day too!” he agreed, glancing at the back of the shop to see if his employer was lurking about.

She leaned closer across the counter. “It makes a body scared to walk the streets, it does.” She sighed again and made her shoulders droop slightly. “And here I’ve got to try and find that poor woman’s address.…”

“It’s all right, now,” the clerk said quickly. “I think I can help you out. The Dapeers house is at number twenty-eight Percy Road. It’s just round the corner.”

“Thank you, ever so much. You’ve saved me an awful lot of bother.”

He blushed even redder. “Mrs. Dapeers and her sister-in-law come in here every now and again. They’re both nice ladies.”

“It must be terrible for her, losing her husband like that.”

“Yes,” he agreed solemnly. “But just between you and me and a tin of sugar, I doubt that there’s many who’ll shed any tears at his funeral.”

Betsy gazed at him appreciatively. “You mean he wasn’t well liked?”

“Not by anyone who worked for him. My sister worked for the Dapeers household a few months ago and she finally left.”

“Goodness, why? Didn’t he pay proper wages?”

“Hamilton,” a booming voice from the rear of the shop bellowed. “Are you through serving that young lady?”

“Almost, sir.” Hamilton smiled nervously at Betsy. “Will there be anything else, miss?”

Betsy didn’t want to get him into trouble. She might not be above a bit of flirting to find out what she needed to know, but she wasn’t going to cause someone to lose their position. “Just that tin of cocoa, there,” she said.

He smiled gratefully at her as he turned and pulled a tin of Cadbury’s off the shelf. “Anything else, miss?” he said loudly enough for his employer to hear.

“No, thank you.” Betsy gave him another smile. “And I appreciate all your help,” she said, stressing the last word ever so slightly.

Hamilton busied himself with taking her money and casting furtive glances toward the rear of the shop to see if he was still being watched. But the owner of the shop, a tall, thin man with graying hair and a long, taciturn face, kept his eye on the clerk and Betsy.

Blast, she thought as she saw the proprietor start toward the front of the shop, what bad luck. Just when she’d finally made contact with someone who might know something about Dapeers, this old Tartar has to ruin everything! She decided to try one last thing.

“Excuse me,” she said softly. Hamilton looked up from wrapping her tin of cocoa in brown paper. Betsy gave him a bold smile. “But I don’t suppose you know of any nice pubs round here, do you?” she asked innocently.

Tom Dapeers smiled uncertainly at the two policemen. He didn’t much like policemen hanging about his pub, but as these two were investigating old Haydon’s murder, he could hardly ask them to leave. “I don’t know what we can tell you,” he said. “Joanne and I only went round to the place for a few minutes. We didn’t see anything.”

Inspector Witherspoon sighed silently. No one seemed to
have seen anything. He glanced at Constable Barnes, who was staring longingly at a glass of pale ale sitting on the far end of the bar. “Exactly what time did you arrive?”

“It must have been a few minutes before six,” Tom replied.

“It were a quarter to,” Mrs. Dapeers put in. “I remember because I looked at the time right before we left here.”

“And did you speak to Mr. Dapeers once you got to the Gilded Lily?” Witherspoon asked.

“Of course,” Tom said. “We were guests. You can’t go to a man’s place of business and not talk to him.”

“Did Mr. Dapeers seem to be in his usual frame of mind?”

Mrs. Dapeers’s eyebrows drew together. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean, did he appear to be upset about anything?” Witherspoon thought it a perfectly reasonable question.

“He was happier than a pig in swill,” Mrs. Dapeers shot back. “Nothing Haydon liked more than showing off. And that new pub of his was his pride and joy.” She laughed harshly. “He’d invited the whole neighborhood to come see it. Mind you, I don’t care how fancy the place is, it don’t hold a candle to ours.”

Witherspoon thought that remark strange. The Black Horse Pub, while clean and decent enough, was as plain as a pikestaff compared with the Gilded Lily. But he certainly wouldn’t be rude enough to contradict a lady. “While you were there, did you see or hear Mr. Dapeers do anything unusual?”

Tom frowned slightly. “Well, not that I can remember.”

“Haydon was talking to that dirty little man in the porkpie hat,” Joanne interrupted. “Funny-looking fellow, don’t your remember him, Tom? He was standing at the far end of the bar. When Haydon first went over to talk to him, I
thought he was going to throw him out. But he didn’t, he stood there and had quite a chat with the bloke.” She grinned maliciously. “And I don’t think he liked what the man had to say, either. By the time the fellow left, Haydon’s mouth was open so far, I thought he’d trip over his chin.”

“You think that this man said something that upset Mr. Dapeers?” Witherspoon pressed.

“I know he did.”

“Now, Joanne,” her husband protested, “you’re just guessing. It could be that Haydon was still upset by that set-to he had with young Taggert.”

Witherspoon made a mental note to remind himself to ask a few more questions about the dirty man in the porkpie hat. But that could come later. “Did you see this, er, set-to between Mr. Taggert and the victim?” he asked.

“Only a little of it,” Tom began. “Mr. Jenkins, the owner of the butcher shop down the street, waved me over to the bar about the time they was really getting heated with one another, so I only heard the beginning of the row.”

“I saw and heard the whole thing, Inspector,” his wife said firmly. “Mind you, Haydon and Taggert weren’t troublin’ to keep their voices down; you could hear them quite clearly, even over all the noise in the pub.”

“Taggert’s an artist,” Tom added. “Haydon hired him to etch all that fancy stuff on the windows in the pub. Nice young fellow, I don’t know why he took that job with Haydon in the first place. He studied in Italy, you know. Comes from a good family too. There’s money there somewhere, you can always tell, you know.”

Barnes cast a quick look at the inspector. “What was the argument about?”

“Haydon hadn’t paid the man,” Tom explained. “At
least the bit I heard was about money. Mind you, I’m not surprised. Haydon had a bit of reputation for not paying people when he owed them.”

Joanne snorted. “Don’t be daft,” she told her husband. “It was more than that. I was standing right behind them and I heard everything. Michael Taggert wasn’t just lookin’ for his money, he was warning Haydon to leave Sarah alone.”