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We both watched out the back window. I don’t know about Aunt Butty, but my heart felt like it was lodged somewhere in the middle of my throat. After what seemed an age, the Morris Minor sailed by. Was it me? Or was he going slowly, as if looking for something?
“We lost him!” Aunt Butty crowed.
“For now.” I waited a few moments, then cautiously backed out of the alley. The Minor was nowhere to be seen and we both breathed out shaky sighs of relief.
A quarter of an hour later found us ensconced at a cozy table at Claridge’s with their largest pot of tea and a tier of finger sandwiches and pastries that would make the Queen herself weep with envy. We ignored the grand arches and elegantly coffered ceiling, intent on restoring ourselves after our adventure.
“What a close call. Almost getting murdered really takes it out of a person.” Aunt Butty selected an egg and cress.
My heart rate was returning to normal and now I wasn’t so sure we’d been nearly murdered. Perhaps I had overreacted slightly. Then again, the driver of the Morris Minor had been following us and I was sure he was the one who’d tried to run down Musgrave. So, maybe she wasn’t just being dramatic.
“I, for one, am famished.” She took a bite of her egg and cress. “Scrumptious. They do know their way around a tea sandwich.”
“That’s because you dragged us off before we had luncheon.” I went straight for the raisin scones. Piling one high with clotted cream shipped over from Devon and fresh berry jam no doubt whipped up in the hotel’s kitchen. It was marvelous.
“More important things to do. Who do you think that was chasing us? And why?”
I had a suspicion about the identity of the driver, but I kept it to myself. For now. “Maybe they didn’t want us sharing what we learned at the hospital today.”
“What did you learn from our mark?”
Aunt Butty had been at the pictures again. I managed to avoid an eye roll, but only just. I gave her a quick rundown of everything Mr. Bamber had told me.
“How fascinating,” she said. “It gets more interesting all the time. Who do you suppose killed Alfred Musgrave?”
I gave her a blank stare. Her eyes narrowed.
“You have an idea, don’t you?”
“Perhaps. But it needs some fleshing out. I’ll have to ponder on it a bit more.”
She gave me a sly look. “Playing it rather close to the vest, are we?”
I shrugged and popped another bite of scone in my mouth, wondering vaguely if I could steal the chef away. They really were the most marvelous scones.
She smiled proudly. “You remind me of myself sometimes.”
I considered that a compliment. “Is that why you saved me?”
She snorted. “You make it sound so dramatic.”
“It was, rather.”
“You were sixteen. Everything is dramatic at sixteen.”
“True,” I admitted. “But my father did lock me in my room.”
“My brother-in-law is a horse’s derrière.”
I barely refrained from snorting tea up my nose. “That’s one way of putting it, darling.”
“It’s the only way of putting it,” she said, liberating a rather scrummy looking raspberry tart from the blue and white china tier.
At age sixteen, I’d fallen wildly in love with a local farmhand. As you do when you’re young and full of nonsense. It was ridiculously inappropriate, and I was dead certain it was forever and ever amen. My father, being the sympathetic type, locked me in my room with nothing but bread and water until I came to my senses. Possibly the first time in his life he got truly riled by something other than the arrival of the Patels. Goodness knows what it all would have come to if my mother hadn’t put her foot down and rung my aunt. Aunt Butty had come flying in like a feather-festooned whirlwind and whisked me away to her townhouse in London.
“I could not allow you to molder away in that ghastly place,” she said firmly. “It just was not on.”
By “ghastly place” she meant Chipping Poggs—where I no doubt would have ended up an old maid still locked in my father’s proverbial dungeon.
“Well, I don’t think I’ve ever properly thanked you for it. So... thank you.”
“Pish posh. It’s what aunties do. Have a Victoria sponge. They’re divine.”
––––––––
I LEFT AUNT BUTTY ON her doorstep, minus a grape or two, and motored off toward home. Once inside, I kicked off my shoes, changed into a clean frock, rang for tea, and sank down on the sofa with a sigh of relief. I was half way through my second cup of Darjeeling when Chaz rang up.
“Darling, why don’t you join me tonight at the jazz club?”
“Sounds lovely, Chaz, darling, but I feel the need of a night to myself.”
“You’ve had a year of nights to yourself,” he pouted.
“True. But this is for a good cause. I’ve nearly cracked the case.”
“You know who murdered that ghastly Musgrave?”
“I might. But I need to have a think.”
“Understood.” He sighed heavily. “I’ll have to find someone to take pity on me.”
“I’m certain you’ll find someone.” The telephone wasn’t the best way to convey my concern, but it needed to be done, albeit carefully. One never knows who is listening in. “But Chaz, perhaps you should skip the Astoria tonight. Go somewhere else.”
“Go where, old thing? The Astoria is the most smashing thing happening right now.”
“It’s just... I talked to Hale. The, um, pianist.”
“Oh, did you?” His voice was light and teasing.
How to say it without revealing too much. “He said a certain gentleman is using it to...”
“To what? Spill it, Ophelia.”
“Deal in a certain substance. One with which you are intimately familiar.” I winced. I hadn’t meant to be so blunt.
“And you think I can’t control myself?”
Oh, dear. He was angry. “No. I don’t think that at all and you know it. What I do think is that it isn’t worth putting yourself in the way of danger.”
“You’re one to talk.”
“I’m trying to solve a mu—” Listening ears, I reminded myself. No need to give the telephone operator extra material for gossip. “I’m trying to assist North.”
Chaz snorted. “Very well. If it will make you feel better, I’ll go to my club tonight. Satisfied?”
Relief flooded me. “Very.”
After he rang off, I padded over to the desk and took a notebook and pen from the drawer. Returning to my perch, I began taking notes in between sips of tea.
First, I wrote Musgrave’s name in the middle of the paper with a circle around it. Then from the circle I drew lines poking out like spokes on a wheel. At the end of each spoke went the name of a suspect and his or her motive for murdering Musgrave. Frankly, it didn’t get me far. I had no new information.
Bamber’s comment about the state of the office when he first found Musgrave dead played over and over in my mind. If he told the truth and the office had been unmussed, the watch unbroken, then the killer must have returned and set up the room to look like a fight had taken place and the watch smashed during the fight. But why?
Because the watch needed to be smashed. It was the only way to ensure the police knew the exact time of death. And the only reason that would be important was that somehow the killer had an alibi for the specific time of twenty minutes past one.
Which, of course, meant that Musgrave likely hadn’t been killed at 01:20 at all. No, if Bamber was telling the truth about finding the body at five minutes past, Musgrave had been killed earlier and the watch changed to match the time the killer needed. Frankly, I believed Bamber. He had nothing left to lose.
Right. I tore off my page of suspects, revealing a clean one. I drew a long line across the center of the page horizontally. Then I drew a shorter line vertically part way across and above it wrote:
12:50 – Alfred arrives for audit.
01:00 – Mabel hears a cough.
01:05 - Bamber finds Body. Office Unmussed. Watch fine.
Further along I drew another vertical line and marked it 01:20 along with the notation that the watch indicated this was when the murder happened and that was when I’d heard what I could only assume was the gunshot. I continued on with my time scale, including everyone’s whereabouts and when each thing had supposedly taken place, finishing up with Helena finding the body at 01:30.
Finally, I stared at the timescale for a good long time. Slowly, an idea began to coalesce in my mind.
First, I needed to talk to Mabel again. Then I needed Detective Inspector North’s assistance, but I had no doubt he’d hang up on me. Or arrest me.
I reached for the phone and dialed Varant. His butler picked up on the third ring. It seemed ages before Varant himself came to the phone.
“Hello?” His voice sounded tinny, but oddly reassuring.
“I need your help.”