Chapter 17 - Investigating
The next morning, Etta elected to go down for breakfast. If she and Miss Mittens were going to solve this crime, she needed to start investigating people and places as soon and as much as possible. Everybody was at breakfast, including Lorenzo Spinoza. Etta stole glances at him, Dennis, and Marjorie Mowbray, thinking about what her mother had told her that morning. Dennis Mowbray and Evangeline Spinoza had been having an affair. Jen had said that meant there were three people who were now possible suspects; Lorenzo, Dennis and Marjorie. Of the three of them, Etta thought Marjorie the least likely. Also, the murder method might exclude her any way. Exactly how had Evangeline been killed? She bet Miss Mittens knew.
Miss Mittens was chatting to Lady Mowbray and sympathising about the loss of her necklace.
‘I should never have lent it to Mrs. Spinoza,’ Lady Mowbray declared.
‘Why did you lend it to Evangeline, Mater?’ Cecil enquired.
Which was exactly the question that Etta and Jen had been asking themselves.
Lady Mowbray flushed a deep, unbecoming crimson. ‘That is none of your business, Cecil.’
‘Since it’s a family heirloom, I do think it is my business,’ he retorted. Etta noticed that he glanced at Sir James as he said it and Sir James went rigid for a moment before relaxing.
‘In the first place, Mater was given it as a birthday present by her parents so it’s not a family heirloom, and in the second place, even if it was a family heirloom, it would either go to Dennis as the next baronet or to me as the daughter of the family,’ Dorothy Mowbray said, glaring at her brother.
‘I don’t see how you think you would get your claws on it,’ began Cecil but was interrupted by Lady Mowbray saying, ‘children, children, this is neither the time nor the place for this discussion,’ she cast a look at Lorenzo Spinoza, ‘please stop talking about it right now.’
‘Listen to your mother,’ thundered Sir James and the Mowbray siblings fell mutinously quiet although still giving each other filthy looks.
Miss Mittens tactfully changed the discussion by asking about the famous Bluebell Woods that were close to the manor.
‘Blasted nuisance,’ Sir James grumbled. ‘Get all these day trippers coming to see the bluebells and then think they have a right to trample all over my property too. Every year, have to set too many of them straight for my liking.
‘It must be good for the local economy though to have such a source of income,’ Miss Mittens said.
‘Pah! It’s not as if I make any money out of it.’
‘You should open a tea shop, Pater,’ Cecil suggested with a gleam in his eye.
Sir James exploded, ‘over my dead body!’
‘Pity,’ Cecil said casually, ‘we would be a real attraction at the moment.’
‘Cecil, really! You go too far!’ Lady Mowbray exclaimed.
He shrugged his shoulders and pushing back his chair, left the room.
‘He really is an odious toad,’ Dorothy said with feeling.
‘Dorothy! Don’t speak about your brother like that,’ Lady Mowbray scolded her.
Breakfast was a good deal more peaceful after the departure of Cecil. Miss Mittens finished before Etta and announced her intention of taking a walk, looking meaningfully at Etta while she did so.
‘I think I’ll join you,’ said Great Aunt Josephine.
‘I’d be delighted but are you sure, Josephine? It’s a sunny day but there is a strong north wind blowing and you know how your chest is,’ Miss Mittens said quickly.
This had the desired effect and Miss Tyneham decided against joining her friend on her little expedition. Etta slipped out of the breakfast room not long after Miss Mittens and found her putting on her tweed cape.
‘Care to join me for a little stroll, Miss Ashcroft?’ Miss Mittens said loudly as she rammed her very battered green cloth hat on her head at a jaunty angle.
. This was for the benefit of the lurking Cook, Etta realised.
‘I was going to go to the Library but I think perhaps I will join you. Thank you.’
Etta found her jacket on the crowded coat rack and put it on.
‘Where are we going?’ asked Etta once they were out of earshot of the house.
‘I thought that we would work our way around the gardens and the outbuildings. As I said to you before, we need to be more imaginative than the police, good fellows in their way but not normally too creative about thinking as the criminal does.’
‘I would have thought that the police had plenty of experience of putting themselves in the place of the criminal,’ remarked Etta.
‘For common crimes perhaps but I think that this is no ordinary crime or crimes, this I believe to be quite extraordinary. Now, let us think about the most unusual places to look.’
Miss Mittens had them looking in all sorts of strange places. In wheelbarrows and under plant pots, to the great annoyance of the gardeners, who promptly informed them that the police had already looked there.
A policeman stood at the entrance to the kitchen garden, watching them. Well, the inspector had said that they would have their eyes on her.
‘Did they look in the well?’ Miss Mittens asked, not at embarrassed by this information.
The gardener scratched his head, ‘I don’t reckon that they did,’ he said finally.
‘Then lead on to the well, good man,’ Miss Mittens commanded.
He led them right to the back of the garden and indicated a round circle of stones about a foot high.
‘They don’t use it any more,’ he said. ‘Not since they got running water.’
‘Thank you, that will be all.’ Miss Mittens dismissed him. ‘Now.’ She bent down by the edge of the well and put her right hand in the well, feeling around the stones on the inside.
‘Ding, dong, dell, pussy’s in the well,’ she sang to Etta’s embarrassment. She was only glad there was no one else there to hear her. Miss Mittens stopped singing and stood up. ‘Pussy may be in the well but the necklace isn’t.’
‘Oh, you thought that there might be a secret compartment in the well,’ said Etta enlightened. ‘Like in “The Little White Horse” by Elizabeth Goudge, where the Moon Maiden hides the pearl necklace in the well.’
Miss Mitten looked at her, curiousity written on her face. ‘I’ve never heard of that book. Is it a recent publication?’
‘It’s a famous children’s book, it’s quite famous, my granny used to read it to me. Her mother read it to her as a child when it first came out, she had a first edition.’
‘So quite old then, strange I’ve never heard of it,’ Miss Mittens commented.
Etta then worked out that if the book had been published when her granny was little, it was still too soon for 1935 as her granny had only been born in 1939. She kept quiet. It made her feel weird to think that if this was the real world; that her grey haired granny wouldn’t be born for another four years. This would have been the world of her great grand parents.
‘We need to be imaginative,’ Miss Mitten said. ’Where do you hide something?’ Without waiting for a reply, she answered, ‘in plain sight where it won’t be noticed. Come along, Miss Ashcroft,’ and she marched out of the kitchen garden.
As they walked briskly back to the house, Etta asked her, ‘if Evangeline Spinoza wasn’t murdered for the diamond necklace, whom do you think might be the murderer?’
‘I’m glad you’re not asking me that where anyone could overhear us. I believe that often the murderer is someone closely related to the victim.’
Etta remembered what Jen had told her before. ‘And isn’t it sometimes the person who discovers the body, the murderer pretending to be an innocent bystander?’
‘Hmm. I haven’t come across any cases of that in the newspapers,’ Miss Mittens said thoughtfully.
‘So it might be Lorenzo Spinoza.’
‘Or it might be Dennis Mowbray,’ MM said.
Astonished, Etta asked, ‘how did you know about that?’
; ‘You forget, my dear that I have been staying here for a few days before you. From hints dropped by Josephine and Agatha (Etta was momentarily confused by the reference before remembering that this was Lady Mowbray), I knew that Dennis was having an affair and when the Spinozas arrived, it became apparent whom with. Now, how did you know?’
‘My mu, maid, told me that Marjorie Mowbray had more or less told her last night.’
‘Poor. Marjorie, it must be very distressing for her. And doubly so now. Although it’s interesting that she told your maid. I wonder…’
‘Wonder what?’ Etta asked, as Miss Mittens didn’t finish the sentence.
‘I wonder if Marjorie is resentful and angry enough about the affair to have her husband accused of murder.’
Etta stared at Miss Mittens, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. ‘No,’ she said.
‘It’s a possibility,’ Miss Mittens said, sounding quite cheerful. ‘Now, who else do we have as suspects?’
‘There’s Miss Potter, my maid, Jane,’ Etta was careful to say the word this time, ‘tells me that she didn’t like Evangeline and said that “the wages of sin are death” so she must have known about the affair too.’
‘But unless Miss Potter suffers from religious homicidal mania, what reason would she have to kill Evangeline? She’d be doing herself out of a job.’
‘Yes, and Jane said that Miss Potter had told them that she would get a big bonus if she stayed with the Spinozas until they returned to the States.
‘I think we can safely rule Miss Potter out unless she is proved to have religious mania. Best to terminate this conversation now, I think.’
They had reached the entrance to the house. As they came into the hallway, Inspector Brighton and Sergeant Wolf were emerging from the Drawing Room.
‘Inspector Brighton!’ Miss Mittens called, ‘may I have a word, please?’ Her tone made it more of a command than a request.
Exasperation flickered across his face but he answered politely enough, ‘of course, Miss Mittens.’
She drew close to him. ‘Has it occurred to you to recheck the bedrooms? In particular, the ladies’ jewellery boxes?’
He stared at her. ‘No, it has not,’ he said slowly.
‘Then I suggest you do so now.’
‘Not a bad idea,’ he swung round to Etta, ‘and we’ll start straight away with you, Miss Ashcroft. Wolf, please go back into the Drawing Room and tell the ladies that we will be searching their bedrooms again. We will bring them out one by one so they can be there while we search.’
Sergeant Wolf nodded and went back into the Drawing Room where they heard a shrill chorus of complaints.
‘Lead the way. Miss Ashcroft, please,’ Inspector Brighton said.
Etta walked up the stairs. Miss Mittens had included herself in the party by simply following behind Inspector Brighton. Her bedroom was quiet and neat. The bed was made up. Inspector Brighton strode to the dressing table and picked up the jewellery case, a wooden box inlaid with ivory and ebony, a pretty thing. He opened the box. Nestling inside the plush inlay, was a pearl necklace, several brooches and… a diamond necklace that sparkled as Inspector Brighton picked it up.
‘How did that get there?’ gasped Etta.
‘Oh come now, Miss Ashcroft, don’t play the innocent with me. Your accomplice must have put it there.’
‘My accomplice?’
‘Jane James, which I strongly doubt is her real name. Your supposed maid. Henrietta Ashcroft, I am arresting you for the theft of Lady Mowbray’s diamond necklace.’