WHEN I GOT BACK TO Paddington Street, there was a stack of mail waiting for me. No new typing projects, but another stack of solicitor advertisements. I wondered if there was something I ought to know about as I brought the stack upstairs and left it on top of the previous stack I hadn’t dealt with yet, then went to see what was in my cupboard for tea. I deserved a good tea after all that investigating. Then I would write up a full report for Inspector Burrows and see about sending it to him.
The cupboards were sorely lacking in proper tea things, mainly because I’d been feeding so many guests during the investigation, and I was just trying to decide whether or not to go out and get myself something good for tea from the shops on the high street when the bell on the message tube chimed. Reluctantly, I went to see who it was.
Inside the message cylinder, I found one of Milly’s calling cards, with her old address, I noticed. At least she had remembered to tell me that it was her at the door. And had used something more readily identifiable than her glove or hatpin. I left the card on the table, put the key to the front door in the tube, and sent it back down. Milly could find her own way up once she was inside. I unlocked the door to my flat then went back to the sitting area to wait. Milly burst into my flat carrying a basket filled with what appeared to be bakery boxes. “Is he here yet?”
“Is who here?” If she was bringing things for tea, then she knew I wasn’t going to like the answer. I hoped she hadn’t invited Mr. Clarke over after their visit to the pub.
“Inspector Burrows, of course. We invited him to tea.”
“We?” At least that was better than a surprise visit from Mr. Clarke.
“He’s your friend, so I knew you would want to be in on the invitation.” Milly took the calling card she’d sent up off the table and put it back in her handbag. She wasn’t going to waste one of them on me, even with her old address. “Now, where do you have your tea?”
I assumed Inspector Burrows was already on his way, and it wasn’t his fault Milly was a bit too free with her invitations to my home, so I put the kettle on and got out the tea caddy and tried to decide if Milly had wanted to use my flat for the meeting because she didn’t want me seeing the sort of place she was currently renting—some of them had had interesting landladies, to say the least—or if she knew there was some less-than-legal activity there that she didn’t want Inspector Burrows to see, or if she simply hadn’t wanted to get out all of her tea things. Normally, I would think it was to avoid buying anything for tea, but she had brought scones and biscuits and some little cakes I assumed as an apology for the short notice, so that wasn’t it. Perhaps she’d found something terribly interesting from Mr. Clarke.
We set the tea up on the small table in the sitting area. Well, I set the tea up and Milly criticized my arrangements while I ignored her. From the list of things she suggested we were missing, she seemed to be expecting a three-course dinner rather than tea. Hopefully she hadn’t suggested anything like that to Inspector Burrows. To distract her, I asked, “How was Mr. Clarke?”
“Oh, he saw an old friend and left me almost as soon as we got to the pub. I didn’t even get to tell him about our investigation.”
“I hope you aren’t telling him too much.”
“Oh no. I’m being very careful. Just enough to get him to start talking. You should hear the way he gossips. If I told him anything, it would be all over the theater in an hour. It is good for investigating, though. I hear all sorts of things. Was that the door? I told Mrs. Albright to expect him.”
And Inspector Burrows was one of the few people Mrs. Albright would send up without checking first. I went to open the door to my flat again.
Inspector Burrows was already halfway up the staircase. “Good afternoon, Miss Pengear. I got a note promising tea and information, although, as it wasn’t in your handwriting, I will not be disappointed if neither is on offer.”
“You’re in luck. We have both, although perhaps not as much as was promised.”
Once Inspector Burrows was inside my flat and divesting himself of his hat and coat, I left Milly to get the table arranged and went to check on the kettle. When I got back with the teapot, Milly and Inspector Burrows were seated at the table and Milly had already filled her plate with scones and little cakes.
“Expecting to need a solicitor in this case?” Inspector Burrows asked, nodding to the stack of advertisements.
“Only if I strangle some of the participants.”
Inspector Burrows looked toward Milly but didn’t comment. Instead, he picked up the stack and moved them off of the table so there would be room for the three of us and our tea. “It’s a slow time for them now. I bet one of your clients gave them your name. Or even someone at the theater.”
“I hope no one there is planning something,” Milly said. “You’ll need to be careful.”
I ignored that and started pouring out the tea.
“Have you found out anything interesting at the theater? Constable Jones said you were there when Mr. Bowen stumbled in.”
“We were,” Milly told him. “And you’ll never believe what he said.”
As I was quite certain Constable Jones had told Inspector Burrows all about Mr. Bowen having seen the body, I wasn’t surprised when he didn’t react to the news. But he did listen to Milly’s description of it and to the rest of what we’d learned since we’d last spoken to him. When we’d finished, he sipped his tea and stared at the saucer. “That is quite a lot of information.”
“I told you we would have this solved in no time,” Milly said. “You wouldn’t have gotten any of that without us. If you need help with anything...”
I tried to kick Milly under the table but only managed to stub my toe on the over-sized central table leg.
Inspector Burrows smiled. He probably realized what had caused the whole table to shake. “It’s a kind offer, but not necessary.”
“Oh, we don’t mind. Cassie, you should put something under the table leg. It seems very shaky today. But you see what the rest of it means, don’t you?” Milly asked. “If Mr. Bowen saw the body, then it must have happened sometime between Mrs. Bowen going into the office and Mr. Bowen stumbling down the stairs. And since Cassie was on the landing when Mr. Bowen tumbled down and she saw Mrs. Bowen go upstairs to the office, she must have seen the killer,” Milly concluded.
“Do you have any idea who you might have seen?” Inspector Burrows asked.
I shook my head. “I’ve been over it so many times, but I really wasn’t watching the office most of the time. I was watching the party.”
Milly sprang to her feet. “Well, we’ll just have to help you remember. And I know just how to do it.” She started scurrying around my flat, grabbing a pair of scissors from my sewing basket and clipping bits of yarn from any balls and skeins she could find, managing to completely ignore every time I said “Milly!” as she snipped, then started poking through my drawers until she came away with a chess set I didn’t know I had, the tea tray, and three books and brought it all over to the table. She shoved the cups and plates out of the way and began setting up her project.
“All right. This is the lobby. These books are the stairs.” She stacked them so they were staggered, representing stairs, then added one of my good tea towels to be the carpet. “And this is the landing.” She balanced the tea tray on top. “And here’s the office door, and the cabinet where the office key was.” The cream pitcher and the last scone respectively.
Inspector Burrows picked up his teacup and grabbed the last biscuit before it could be sacrificed to Milly’s cause.
“I think that’s enough of the set. Now the actors. This is me.” Milly put the red queen in place on the table. “And here you are.” She grabbed the red bishop and put it in the space she had declared the landing. “And Mrs. Landon.” She took the other red bishop and tied a piece of green yarn around it.
Inspector Burrows leaned over and grabbed the white queen then swapped her for the red. Then he put the red queen where the bishop Milly had declared was me stood.
“But I wasn’t...” Milly started.
Inspector Burrows waited until she caught on.
“Oh. I suppose the Queen of Hearts does make more sense as the red queen. And my Cleopatra gown was white. Now, this will be Mr. Bowen.” She took the white bishop and put a black thread on him. “And Mrs. Bowen.” She was the other white bishop, with a bit of blue yarn to match her costume. “And Miss Lloyd-Mason.” A red rook with pink yarn. “And Miss Kelsey.” The other red rook with fawn yarn. “And Miss Finch.” A white pawn with pink yarn.
Inspector Burrows looked amused by Milly’s little project. Of course, it wasn’t his yarn being sacrificed for it.
Milly stopped arranging pieces on the table and looked at her work. “All right, who else did you see?”
I decided it couldn’t hurt to play along. And my yarn had already been sacrificed for it. “Mrs. Bowen went into the office. I didn’t see when she came out so it must have been while I was watching Miss Finch downstairs. I saw someone in black walking across the landing, but I don’t know who it was. They went toward the other set of boxes, so there must have been a way down over there.”
Milly dithered for a moment then put the other red bishop further down the landing.
“Someone was feeling around the top of the cabinet. I thought it was Mrs. Bowen, but that was after we talked to her. I didn’t know who it was at the time. And now that I think of it, if it was her, she took an awfully long time going to get the key. But if it wasn’t, then why didn’t I see her take the key?”
Milly took a red knight and put it by the cabinet.
“Then I was watching Marie-Antoinette. I think that’s when Miss Lloyd-Mason was coming back. And then Mr. Bowen came up the stairs, and I moved. And then he tumbled down the stairs, which means the body was already in the office, and I left to go back to the party.” I took the red queen and moved her to the bottom of the book/stairs.
Milly leaned back. “That was supposed to solve it. Really, you have to remember something else.”
It wasn’t as if I hadn’t tried. “I didn’t know there was going to be a murder.”
Inspector Burrows looked at the setup. “All right. I’ll ask around and see if anyone else saw this person in black. That might be something. Do you remember anything more about them?”
“I didn’t see them well.”
“All right. Even though they were heading away from the office, they might have seen something. And I’ll have another look at the landing and see if there’s someplace over there they might have been going.” Inspector Burrows got to his feet. “This has been a most enlightening tea. I’ll take the pair of you somewhere nice when this is over. Maybe Liberty?”
Clearly he knew Milly well enough to be very specific about the offer, as Milly’s idea of someplace nice would quite likely be quite a bit more than he wanted to spend.
“We look forward to it,” I told him.
After Inspector Burrows had left, I started clearing up the remains of the tea. Milly surprised me by starting to help.
“Should I leave the reconstruction of the crime scene set up?”
I was tempted to say no, but it had helped me remember a couple of people I’d forgotten. Neither one seemed to make a good murderer, but perhaps I would remember someone else, someone I’d seen out of the corner of my eye perhaps. “Leave it for now. We might think of something.”
“I knew it was a good idea. I’ll pack up the last of these scones and get them out of your way.” So that was why Milly was helping to clear the tea things.
When I went back into the sitting room from putting away the tea things, Milly had finished boxing up the scones, replacing the scone representing the cabinet with a spool of thread presumably so she could take that too, and was staring at the improvised model of the lobby. “There has to be something here you missed.”
I was tempted to point out that Milly hadn’t seen anything at all that night, but she was right. If the murder had happened after Mrs. Bowen left the office and before Mr. Bowen fell down the stairs, the murderer must have walked right past me. If I could just remember. I sat down at the table. “Who haven’t we figured out yet?”
Milly looked at the list of people I’d remembered seeing. “Who was wearing the black domino cloak you saw, and whoever it was feeling the top of the cabinet.”
I started with the black domino. “Whoever it was, was walking away from the office when I saw them. At least I think they were. Otherwise the timing was right, but I didn’t see them come upstairs or go into the office.” I stared at the two figures Milly had used to represent the black domino and the person at the cabinet. The red bishop and the red knight. They had been moving around with the others. If I could just remember who had been where. I took the white bishop that was Mrs. Bowen and traced her path as she went to the office. She didn’t find her blackmailer and left, but I wasn’t sure how, so I had to put her on the table without having her pass my spot on the landing. The red bishop crossed the landing to leave somewhere further down. I paused. Was that it?
“The person in the black domino, I wonder if that could have been Mrs. Bowen leaving.”
Milly leaned in to look at the model. “But wasn’t her cloak blue to match her dress?”
“She did say she planned on turning her cloak with the black lining out and wearing it over her dress after she met with the blackmailer. What if she didn’t want anyone to see her leaving the room anyway?” As I tried to remember the figure in the black domino more clearly to see if it could have been a cloak covering the dress, the implications of the idea struck me. “Why would she care if anyone saw her leave if she didn’t see the blackmailer? She could have made any excuse for being in there.”
“You mean she didn’t want to be seen because she killed him,” Milly hissed.
“Maybe. Or she could have seen the body, known it was in there, and didn’t want to be connected to it.”
“And then lied to everyone about it,” Milly finished.
“We need to talk to her again.”
“She should still be at the theater. Ryan said they were rehearsing late so they’ll be ready when the theater can re-open.”
“I’ll get my coat. It’s a pity we let Inspector Burrows go.” I considered sending him a note, but I wasn’t sure where to send it. He might have gone home, or back to the Yard, or he might even have had plans for the evening. Hard as it was to imagine, he and Inspector Wainwright might have gone somewhere. By the time we found him, Mrs. Bowen would have left for the night. But I wasn’t confronting a possible murderer without anyone knowing, so I scribbled a note to Inspector Burrows telling him that the black domino I’d seen could have been Mrs. Bowen disguising herself after seeing the body, and addressed it to his flat so he’d get it when he got home. We were sure to find a messenger somewhere on Marylebone Road who would take it for us with instructions to leave it if he wasn’t there. We also stopped in at Mrs. Albright’s flat to let her know where we were going. I could tell Milly was tempted to take her up on her offer of almond cake before we left, but she turned it down.