Death in Kew Gardens, Page 3

  A man with a thick golden mustache stood next to the window, scowling at a footman who babbled back at him. I recognized Detective Inspector McGregor, and beat a hasty retreat, hoping to heaven he hadn’t noticed me.

  I was to be thwarted in my hope, because Inspector McGregor strode out of the room a moment later. “I ought to have guessed I’d find you here, Mrs. Holloway.”

  His glare could make the most stouthearted criminal wilt, but I swallowed my trepidation and met his gaze. “Of course, as I live next door. I came to lend my aid to the cook and housekeeper, as you see.” I indicated the dining room, where the food now reposed. “Policemen in the house means extra work for them.”

  His hazel eyes held a skeptical glint. “As long as you are here, tell me what you know of this. Did you see anyone lurking near the house last night or this morning?”

  “I saw a good many people,” I answered truthfully. “Mount Street is a busy thoroughfare. As for lurking, I could not say. What time did the crime occur? I could be more specific if you told me that.”

  “We don’t know.” McGregor might be a bad-tempered man—mostly from frustration—but he was an honest one. “The valet saw him alive at nine last night, and found him dead this morning at six.”

  “That is quite a long span. About nine last night I was outside in the street, handing the leavings of supper to beggars. They took what I gave them and went. None lingered or crept near this house. After that, I was attending my duties until I went off to bed, and I did not bother to look out any windows. So I am afraid I cannot help you.”

  I kept my encounter with Mr. Li to myself. I knew the moment a foreigner was mentioned, the police would fix on him as the most likely suspect, and I was quite certain Mr. Li had nothing to do with this. He was a polite, well-spoken gentleman, and after he’d given me the box of tea, he’d walked off in the opposite direction from the Harknesses’ house, heading for Berkeley Square.

  I knew full well that Mr. Li could have returned to Mount Street later in the night, but I had lived with the dregs of London in my youth, and Mr. Li was not at all the criminal type. He was also past his first youth. How easy would it have been for him to climb into a window, rush upstairs, and stab a rather hearty man like Sir Jacob?

  The ground-floor windows lay behind railings, which would have to be scaled. A nimble burglar would have no trouble, but a middle-aged man in flapping robes might be hard pressed. Then he’d have to ramble through the house to find the correct bedchamber, avoiding servants and other members of the household. Not an easy thing, by any means.

  The inspector looked disappointed with my lack of knowledge. “If you remember anything . . .”

  “I will immediately send you word,” I assured him. “Now, if you will excuse me, they will expect me home.”

  McGregor nodded a dismissal, but I felt his suspicious gaze on my back as I went.

  I returned to the kitchen, told Mrs. Finnegan to send for me if she needed further assistance, and left through the scullery to the street.

  As I made my way to the stairs leading to our kitchen door, two constables came out of Sir Jacob’s house and hurried past me. I watched them, mystified, as a chill wind blew along the street, holding a note of coming winter.

  I continued down the stairs and in through the scullery. As I entered my warm kitchen and slid off my coat, a man rose from the table where he’d been lounging. My heart skipped a beat and I stood with my coat dangling half on, half off, probably looking a right fool.

  “There you are, Mrs. Holloway,” Daniel McAdam said. “Did you find the murderer yet?”

  Mr. Davis strode into the kitchen at that moment and snatched up the teapot to slosh tea into a cup for himself, sending Daniel a severe look as he did so. Mr. Davis did not approve of my friendship with Daniel. He believed Daniel too far beneath me.

  If only Mr. Davis knew the truth. To be fair, I wasn’t certain I knew the truth of Daniel. He was many people all jumbled up.

  “Don’t be silly,” I said. A steaming cup of tea rested on the table at Daniel’s place, which meant he’d charmed it out of Tess.

  “I saw the police run down the street, likely to search for a culprit,” I continued as I hung my coat on a peg and moved to the stove. “I suppose Inspector McGregor has already fixed on a poor unfortunate.”

  “A Chinaman,” Mr. Davis said. He blew across his tea to cool it. “Sheppard told me a few minutes ago. Seems a gardener—at least a man helping Sir Jacob with his garden—claimed to have seen a Chinaman wandering the street nearby last night. Sir Jacob made plenty of enemies in China, so Sheppard says. Sheppard was in China with him, so he’d know.”

  “Oh,” Tess said with interest. “I wonder if he means your Chinaman, Mrs. H.? Just fancy—you might have been talking so cozy to a murderer.”

  3

  Silence followed Tess’s remark, and I turned to find all staring at me—Mr. Davis in shock, Tess with curiosity, Daniel in growing concern.

  “Mrs. H. was chatting with him like they were old friends,” Tess babbled on. “Of course, she knocked the poor bloke over day before last, and I suppose she was apologizing again. Fancy, not long after that, he went next door and done in their master.”

  “He certainly did not.” I resolutely returned to cooking, giving the potatoes Tess had put on to parboil a vigorous stir. “He walked in entirely the opposite direction—I watched him until he was gone. I will not tell the police to chase him down because he is Chinese.”

  “Would you if he were simply another Londoner?” Daniel asked, his voice holding a note of gentleness.

  I sent him an irritated look. “No, I would not. Not only did he walk the other way, he did not seem the murderous sort. He was very polite and well spoken. But I am not being sentimental because he is foreign, if that is what you are implying. Even if he’d been a Cockney carter, I’d not set the police on him. He did not linger, I tell you, but went on his way. Once the coroner discovers the time of death, or as near as he can, I imagine the suspects will be narrowed down.”

  “How can they do that?” Tess asked as she chopped mushrooms into a neat pile. “Find out when a man died, I mean? When he’s been laid out for hours?”

  I shrugged, relieved the topic had been changed. “Stiffness, I believe. I suppose coroners develop an instinct—the same as I can tell how long a fish has been sitting on a market stall. The fishmonger might claim it’s fresh as a daisy, but I know he’s had it for a day or so.”

  “Blood.” Daniel took a noisy slurp of tea and lifted a flat crumpet from the platter in the middle of the table. “It pools in the bottom half of the body. How much blood has sunk can help the coroner guess how long the person has laid in one place.”

  Mr. Davis shuddered. “Gruesome. Well, Mrs. Holloway, I hope your conviction does not let a murderer get away. I shall certainly secure all the windows on this house quite rigorously tonight.”

  “Wise,” Daniel said. “One never knows, Mr. Davis.”

  He spoke calmly, chewing his buttered crumpet like a man happy to have a few moments to do nothing. The tops of his work boots were muddy, but I could see from lack of mud on the floor that he’d scraped them well on the doorstep.

  “You won’t tell the constables, will ya?” Tess appealed to both Mr. Davis and Daniel. “Don’t want to get Mrs. Holloway in trouble.”

  Mr. Davis gave her a freezing look. “I do not speak to the police, young woman. Mrs. Holloway must follow her conscience.”

  With that he strode out, turning in the direction of the butler’s pantry. I noticed another crumpet missing and a few spots of butter on the floor where he’d stood.

  Tess shook her head. “Some days I want to creep up behind him and yank off his false hair. Wouldn’t we all laugh?” She cackled in delight.

  “You will do no such thing.” My admonishment was a bit more forceful than need be, because I w
as at times tempted to do the same. “Mr. Davis is butler here and deserves your respect. Now, say no more about it.”

  Tess had grown used to my chiding, and her smile did not waver. She’d learned to discern when I shared her opinions.

  Daniel came to his feet. His crumpet had vanished, crumbs and all. “Perhaps we can have a word, Mrs. Holloway?” He spoke easily, but a firmness underlay his tone.

  “If you wish.” I poked at the potatoes then used cloths around the pot’s handles to remove it from the burner and set it on the back of the stove to keep warm. I’d sauté the potatoes later—they fried up better if they were parboiled first.

  Taking my time, I laid down the cloths, glanced approvingly at Tess’s heap of mushrooms, and told her to move on to the onions. Only then did I lead Daniel to the housekeeper’s parlor.

  I’d taken over this room as my own since the last housekeeper had departed. I’d made the place cozier with a few more cushions and two framed prints I’d bought in a shop—one of flowers, the other of a pleasant country landscape. I kept my cookbooks and accounting books here along with my kitchen journal and the few magazines I allowed myself as an indulgence.

  I waved Daniel to a chair. “As I see you have cleaned your boots thoroughly, I will allow you on the carpet.”

  “Good of you, Kat.” He dropped his working-class accent for the more neutral one he used when we were alone. He waited until I’d seated myself on the Belter chair before he took the plainer, harder one. “Now, tell me about this Chinese gentleman.”

  “Do you know I believe no one would be interested in the poor man if there hadn’t been a murder,” I said. “He’d just be one more foreign face on the street.”

  “But there has been a murder, and Sir Jacob has a strong connection with China. You’d never seen this man before . . . When did Tess say? The day before yesterday?”

  I told Daniel the story, ending with how Mr. Li had waited for me last night to give me a small token of thanks.

  Even as I spoke, I realized Daniel was correct. It was strange that Mr. Li had been in the street near the Harknesses’ house for me to run into, and also odd that he’d returned to give me so elaborate a present. I also had to wonder how he’d known I would emerge to give scraps to the beggars, though that could have been chance. He might have been waiting to go downstairs and knock on the door when I’d walked out. Or he could have asked the beggars, and they’d told him I would come appear.

  “What was the token?” Daniel asked, his tone holding caution.

  “I suppose you cannot help your suspicious nature. It is nothing grand. A box of tea. Kind, but hardly gold from the court of Peking.”

  “Did you look inside the box?”

  “A quick peek. It is definitely tea. Brown leaves. Smelled fine—higher quality than what servants usually have, but that does not signify. Mr. Li might work in a tea shop or a tea warehouse. Not that I mean he stole it,” I added quickly. “He might simply know how to purchase a better grade.”

  “I am not happy you are so close to a house in which there was a murder,” Daniel said.

  I laughed lightly. “You forget, my dear Daniel, there was a murder in this house earlier this year.”

  “And I was not happy about that either. You do seem to attract trouble.”

  “The murders we’ve stumbled across were hardly my doing,” I pointed out. “This one does not seem as great a puzzle as the others—I wager a burglar climbed through the open window and made his way upstairs in search of riches. Sir Jacob woke and surprised him, and the burglar stabbed him in panic. He then fled through the same window, in too much of a hurry to steal anything, and vanished into the night.”

  “I would agree with you,” Daniel said, “except for one thing. You live next door, and ordinary things do not happen around you.”

  I gave him a stern look. “Now you are being fanciful. Not everything is about antiquities thieves or plots to assassinate the queen. Sometimes it is an ordinary burglary and a frightened person in the wrong place at the wrong time. Unnerving, but not a grand conspiracy.”

  “Ah well.” Daniel sat back. “It must be my suspicious nature that makes me believe otherwise.”

  “My apologies. I did not mean to insult you.”

  “No insult, Kat. I am teasing you.”

  “How is James?” I asked abruptly.

  Daniel’s eyes warmed. “Hale and hearty. Driving me to distraction.”

  “Good. As it should be.”

  James was Daniel’s sixteen-year-old natural son who’d been grievously hurt in our last adventure. Daniel had taken a house in Kensington—very cozy; I quite liked it—and had moved James in to care for him.

  James, with the vigor of youth, had recovered quickly. But instead of sending his son back to the boardinghouse where Daniel had been keeping him, Daniel had James remain with him.

  I quite approved of the arrangement, but after a long, hot summer together, I knew both were chafing. Father and son were very much alike.

  “And Mr. Thanos?” I inquired.

  “Also hale and hearty, and has returned to his own rooms near Regent’s Park. Has a bee in his bonnet about Maxwell’s equations at the moment, but I am certain the fit will pass.”

  I did not know who Mr. Maxwell was or what his equations were about, but Mr. Thanos was a brilliant mathematician, and I was certain he’d solve them soon.

  “You may tell Mr. Thanos,” Lady Cynthia’s voice came to us from the doorway, “that he could remember his friends and send them word occasionally. And that there are other things in the world besides mathematics.”

  Daniel came to his feet and made a servant’s bow as Lady Cynthia strolled in and shut the door. He balled his large hands around his cap, which made him look like a laborer who’d been caught where he shouldn’t be.

  “I am not certain Mr. Thanos realizes this,” he told her.

  “Do sit down,” Cynthia commanded, waving at us both—I too had come to my feet. She plopped into the remaining chair. “You do not have to play the lackey for me, Mr. McAdam. I know too much about you. I’ve come to tell you more about the murder next door, if you are interested.”

  I was very much. Despite my dismissal of it as a simple crime, I admitted to curiosity. I felt a twinge of guilt at my morbidity, but I assuaged it by telling myself I could possibly help find the killer and make him pay for what he’d done. Sir Jacob, from what little I knew of him, had been pompous and boasted a bit too much about his adventures in China, but he no more deserved to die than if he’d been saintly and silent.

  Cynthia crossed her booted feet. “It’s all very well for Inspector McGregor to send his men to scour Limehouse for any Chinaman who happened to be west of Regent Street last night. But McGregor wasn’t at the garden party the other day, was he? Harkness got into it with his botanist, the very one who is trying to throw suspicion on a Chinese man he claims he saw skulking about. Skulking, my foot. The chap’s inventing things.”

  “Mr. Davis said the man who’d seen the Chinese gentleman was a gardener,” I said in puzzlement.

  Cynthia shook her head. “Mr. Chancellor is a botanist Sir Jacob quizzes every fortnight about his Oriental plants. Chancellor is installed at Kew Gardens and apparently has all the goods on anything that grows. Sir Jacob consults him, I suppose, about grafts and fertilizer and other things for growing his exotic blooms. At the garden party, the two were at it, hammer and tongs. Shouting and screeching. We all saw and heard. Lady Harkness hovered about, not knowing what to do, so I went over and told them to quiet down.”

  I could well imagine Lady Cynthia striding to Sir Jacob and explaining to him that he was ruining his wife’s party. She had little patience with those who bullied others, and she had confidence in her own authority.

  “Chancellor looked dashed embarrassed,” Cynthia went on. “Though Sir Jacob snarled at me,
the uncouth ass. Nonetheless, the two men went their separate ways. But I saw the look Chancellor threw Sir Jacob as he departed. Disgust, near to rage. Not surprised Chancellor wants to throw the blame onto someone else. I suspected him right off, especially as Sir Jacob had toddled out to Kew Gardens beforehand.”

  “But Sir Jacob was stabbed while he was in bed,” I said. “I can understand Mr. Chancellor coming to visit and the two getting into a tussle, but if he’d lured Sir Jacob to Kew, why not finish him off there? Or lure him somewhere else entirely? Why follow Sir Jacob home then creep into his bedchamber and stab him?”

  “Haven’t the faintest idea,” Cynthia said without worry.

  “And why would Mr. Chancellor be in Mount Street to see a Chinese man lurking?” I went on.

  “Don’t know,” Cynthia answered. “Only filling in what I observed. You are the expert on the whys and wherefores, Mrs. H.”

  “Many possibilities,” Daniel agreed.

  “I still believe a burglar is the most likely culprit,” I said. “Unlocked window, the family in bed. Is Lady Harkness certain nothing was missing? I saw quite a lot of things in their house—I imagine it would be a job to inventory them all.”

  “No one believes anything was taken,” Cynthia said. “At least not that they’ve discovered. What I do know is that the family was not in bed. Lady Harkness had a late-night visitor, Mrs. Knowles, a sort of companion and confidante. I know nothing about her—no one does, really. The woman seems respectable enough, if a bit smarmy for my taste. Hangs on Lady Harkness’s every word, tells her how wonderful she is, that sort of thing. A sycophant.”

  “Is she likely to have stabbed Sir Jacob?” I asked doubtfully.

  “One never knows, does one? You taught me that. Mrs. Knowles is a tiny woman, but a lucky blow, from above . . .” Cynthia demonstrated with her strong hand. “Could have done it. She’s like a terrier, is Mrs. Knowles, protecting Lady Harkness. Sir Jacob might have been threatening Lady Harkness, or simply said the wrong thing to Mrs. Knowles.”