A Fatal Freedom (47 page)

Gradually the shakes subsided.

Shouts from the circus ring rose along with loud cracks of the whip. Arturo the Magnificent had brought his lions back under control. They were prowling the cage but seemed more puzzled than aggressive. More cracks of the whip and shouts returned them to their stands.

Ursula sat up straight and looked gratefully at Jackman. ‘Where did you spring from?’

He glanced at Mrs Bruton’s recumbent body. ‘Don’t have to worry about her for a bit,’ he said, then turned to Ursula again, his eyes assessing her condition. ‘You sent me a note this morning that said the two of you were to come here this afternoon so I wasn’t to call on you at Mrs Maple’s until this evening. I decided to meet you here instead.’

Ursula rubbed at her forehead, still unable to believe she was alive. She looked at the comatose Mrs Bruton. ‘What did you hit her with?’

He reached into his jacket and brought out an efficient-looking revolver. ‘Lucky I thought to bring it.’

Jackson was not a person who allowed luck to play an important part in his dealings with life. Ursula thought back to the note she had sent. ‘Certain things have occurred that suggest I might have identified Albert Pond’s killer,’ she had written. But she had never suspected Mrs Bruton’s reason for suggesting a visit to the menagerie and she had never been so glad to see anyone in her life than Jackman that afternoon.

‘Should we call the police?’

‘Oh, I think so. If the struggle I interrupted means what I think, that syringe contains cyanide.’

Ursula shuddered. ‘She killed Albert and Mr Peters. If we tell Inspector Drummond that, he has to release Alice.’

‘I presume you know why they were blackmailing your employer?’

‘I have a theory.’

It was easy enough, thought Ursula, to say she had a theory but would it convince Jackman? She watched him use strong arms to pull the unconscious Mrs Bruton up from the slats and arrange her body in a sitting position.

They were high above the rest of the audience. Attention had been so fixed on what was happening in the lion cage with Arturo the Magnificent, even those people sitting directly across the ring from herself and Mrs Bruton did not seem to have noticed their struggle. Instead, everyone’s eyes were on the battle Arturo was having to bring his lions back under control.

Jackman gave a series of small slaps to Mrs Bruton’s face. Her head lolled backwards and sideways. He lifted one of her eyelids and checked her pupils.

‘Will she be OK?’ Ursula asked. The woman had tried to kill her but she did not want Jackman to have taken her life. She was glad the woman’s eyes were closed; the look of hate Mrs Bruton had given her as she tried to insert her syringe into Ursula’s flesh had been shocking.

‘She’s just out for the count. Help me take her outside, then we can send for the police.’ He picked up the handbag that contained the syringe.

With one of Mrs Bruton’s arms across each of their shoulders, Ursula and Jackman manhandled her unconscious body down the steps and out of the circus tent, her head lolling from side to side, their progress noted by no more than a few of the audience. Ursula caught a ‘Disgraceful, she’s drunk,’ comment as they went.

Outside, Jackman steered them round the circus tent towards the encampment area. One of the menagerie workers came up and asked if they needed a hand.

‘I’ve got this woman under arrest,’ said Jackman. ‘She tried to kill Miss Grandison.’ He indicated Ursula. ‘Had to knock her out.’

The worker, a small man with a droopy moustache and lank black hair, dressed in brown dungarees with a large white and red checked handkerchief round his neck, whistled. ‘You don’t say! I better get Ma.’ He ran off towards the caravan site.

Jackman and Ursula dragged Mrs Bruton in the same direction.

Then Ma appeared and took control.

‘Those lions! They was gone crazy! You know why?’

‘I think she used a dog whistle,’ said Ursula. ‘That’s what it looked like and I know she has one. It’s in her handbag.’

‘Along with the syringe she tried to kill Miss Grandison with.’ Jackman tucked the bag more securely beneath his arm.’

Ma stood with her hands on her hips. ‘What we do with ’er, eh?’

Mrs Bruton, showing no signs of regaining consciousness, was still suspended between Jackman and Ursula.

‘Over other side is empty van,’ said Ma. ‘You take her there, yes? Willie help.’

‘Sure,’ said the droopy moustached worker.

‘Better if he went for the police,’ said Jackman. ‘You all right?’ he asked Ursula, still helping to support the unconscious woman.

She nodded but her legs didn’t feel as though they could keep her upright much longer. Shock was beginning to turn her muscles to water.

‘You look about collapse,’ said Ma. She put two fingers in her mouth and gave a long, high-pitched whistle.

Two more workers dressed in brown overalls appeared.

‘This woman ’ere needs go that van there.’ Ma pointed to a somewhat dilapidated vehicle at the back of the little circle of caravans. ‘Store animal feed,’ she added. ‘Feed low now, lots of room for ’er. Fetch rope, tie her,’ she said to one of the workers. ‘Willie, you go police station, fetch constable.’

‘I think I’d better write a note to Inspector Drummond of the Marylebone Station,’ said Jackman. ‘They can send it on.’

Ursula admired the skill with which Ma organised them all. In no time it seemed Mrs Bruton was incarcerated in the old van, her wrists and ankles tied and the door fastened with a padlock; Jackman had been provided with pen and paper; Willie had been sent off with his note to the police station; and Ursula had been made to stretch out in Ma and Pa’s luxurious caravan with her feet up and a glass of Ma’s ‘special tonic’ to revive her.

‘Is old, old recipe I always ’ave. Would bring life to Egyptian mummy.’

The drink was slightly bitter, with a complex mixture of flavours that really did seem to make Ursula feel she was no longer going to keel over.

‘What did you say in your note to Inspector Drummond?’ she asked Jackman, sitting up, swinging her legs down to the ground and trying to neaten her hair into its usual knot. It had come loose in her fight with Mrs Bruton and her hat was still somewhere up where they’d been sitting. Beside everything else that had happened, it didn’t seem to matter. Only Jackman was there to see what a mess she was in. Ma had gone, she said, to check on Pa and the lions and tell him about the dog whistle. ‘Beasts never act so before,’ she said as she left.

Jackman gave Ursula a smug look, sat opposite her and put his bowler beside him. How, Ursula wondered, had he managed to keep hold of his hat through everything that had happened?

‘I told Drummond that we had the murderer of Joshua Peters and Albert Pond under lock and key, and suggested he get over here pronto and take her into custody. And that he could release Miss Fentiman and arrange the same for Mrs Peters.’

‘It seems that Rachel has already been released. While we were waiting for tickets into the menagerie, I saw her. She was with Lord John. And it’s no use looking at me like that, I have no idea why she was allowed to go.’

Jackman ran a hand through his hair. ‘Lord John, isn’t his father some high-up aristocrat?’

‘A duke, I believe.’

‘Bet he’s used him to pull rank. Gone to the Commissioner of Police, probably. Those toffs all stick together. My, Drummond will be mad as anything. And now I’m presenting him with the real killer.’ His smug look suddenly disappeared. ‘What is Rachel Fentiman doing here? Is she in league with your Mrs Bruton?’ He got up and went to look out of the door as though she might pass by.

‘Honestly, Thomas, can’t you give up on the idea that Rachel Fentiman murdered her brother-in-law?’

‘It seems a good deal more likely than that Mrs Bruton should.’

‘And Alfred Pond?’

He shrugged, came and sat down again. ‘Drummond said he had a witness that saw the Fentiman woman calling on Pond’s house just before he was killed.’

‘Ah, now that’s what put me on to Mrs Bruton. I was packing up her clothes this morning,’ Ursula paused for a moment. It seemed so much longer ago she had been with her employer in Brown’s Hotel, acting as her maid. ‘And I found a cream beret, identical to the one Rachel Fentiman has. Rachel was wearing it when she came to Mrs Bruton’s tea party. She removed it from my hand. It set me to thinking. If someone saw a woman wearing a cream beret over dark hair hanging loose, in the vicinity of Albert Pond’s building on Friday afternoon, it could very well be taken as a description of Rachel Fentiman. She always wore that beret. It was like an epiphany. That’s why I wrote that note.

‘What clinched it for me was that, while we were having lunch, I mistook a woman for Mrs Trenchard because she wore a hat almost identical to the one she wore at that same tea party. And I said something about how one had to be careful to look at the face rather than the hat. Stupid of me, it must have convinced Mrs Bruton I was on to her.’

‘Why did she have a cyanide-loaded syringe in her handbag?’

Ursula had been giving some thought to just this question. ‘She wouldn’t have wanted me to find the syringe or the cyanide while I was doing her packing, or Enid doing the unpacking. Much safer to place both in her handbag. She probably had them carefully wrapped or in some sort of case. Then, having seen me with the beret, she decided she had to be prepared to deal with me if I really did suspect her. She could have made sure the syringe was to hand after she sent me off to arrange with the concierge for her baggage to be taken to Wilton Crescent.’

‘She kept the syringe loaded?’

‘Isn’t your revolver?’

‘But that has a safety catch.’

‘It’s a large syringe, probably needs a firm hand to inject its contents. After I’d made my remark about thinking I saw Mrs Trenchard because of a similar hat, Mrs Bruton called over the waiter and made a fuss about needing water. I think that was a deliberate attempt to divert my attention away from hats. And I think that was when my death warrant was signed.’

Jackman didn’t seem convinced. ‘Is she that quick a thinker?’

Ursula nodded and stretched her legs, thinking how much stronger they now felt. ‘Oh, I think so. All along she has behaved as though all it needed was one action to solve her problem. Sending Joshua Peters the poisoned chocolates would remove her blackmailer. It would have seemed the perfect crime. She had no connection with him that anyone knew about, so why should she know of his love for cherry liqueur chocolates?’

‘Just as she thinks she’s in the clear, Albert contacts her?’

‘Exactly. Another problem to be removed and so she sets another plan in motion.’

‘Surely he can’t have told her where he lived!’

‘No, I’m sure he was far too canny. I reckon he arranged initially for them to meet in some public place and I think it was sheer luck, or Albert’s bad luck, that one morning she saw him enter
Maison Rose
. Her rooms at Brown’s Hotel overlook their building. She is then all ready to follow him when he emerges.’

Jackman looked sceptical. ‘Blackmailers very seldom reveal themselves to their victims. All along the fact that Peters met his death because of his fondness for cherry liqueurs meant that his killer knew him.’ He thought for a moment. ‘If, therefore, Mrs Bruton knew who her blackmailer was, it wouldn’t have been a big step to identify Albert as the one carrying on the blackmail after Peters’ death.’

‘As I said, she is a very quick-witted woman. Far cleverer than she looks. She has built herself a valuable portfolio of properties she rents out. They are yielding her a sizeable income on top of whatever her husband provided for her.’

‘So, however she does it, she identifies where Albert is living and immediately decides to murder him?’

‘Yes, I think that is exactly what happened. The poisoned chocolates wouldn’t work with him, nor would any other comestible, Albert would be far too suspicious of anything he hadn’t acquired himself. Mrs Bruton, a long time ago, worked with Mrs Maple in a hospital. She would have known all about syringes and injections. I think she also planned to incriminate Rachel Fentiman by acquiring a beret identical to hers. She would have remembered her from the tea party. She is very friendly with Rachel’s aunt, Mrs Trenchard, and after Joshua Peters’ appearance in her drawing room, the Fentiman sisters will have been a subject of conversation. Rachel and Mrs Bruton are about the same height and have the same coloured hair. Wearing her very plainest outfit and with the beret worn over her hair loose, from the back she could easily have been mistaken for her. And as far as the police were concerned, Rachel might easily have been being blackmailed by Albert Pond.’

Ursula gave Jackman a severe look. ‘After all, you were convinced that Rachel could have killed her brother-in-law, and, even if she hadn’t, was capable of killing Pond to save her sister.’

He made a graceful gesture that said she had a point, then gave her a sharp look. ‘But what could Peters and Pond, what a devilish pair they made, what could they have been blackmailing Mrs Bruton over?’

Ursula laced her fingers together and stretched her arms out, knowing she had come to the hardest part of her theory. ‘This is where I have no evidence, at least, not yet. Remember that tea party where Joshua Peters turned up?’

Jackman nodded. ‘He had me with him, waiting outside. He left that party looking as though he’d been mauled by a wild animal.’

Ursula smiled. ‘At the time I thought Peters was acting strangely because he was so angry about the disappearance of his wife, and that Mrs Bruton was upset because he had ruined her party. But this morning she mentioned what a terrible fellow he was and I thought it was a little strange of her to bring that up then. But I remembered how shocked each of them had seemed, with Mrs Bruton going quite pale. What if they had recognised each other?’

‘You mean, perhaps they had known each other a long time ago?’

Ursula nodded. ‘And hadn’t expected to meet again.’

‘But why not say something? In such circumstances, wouldn’t you comment, “Why, Joshua, how amazing that you should visit my tea party”, and I would respond, perhaps, with: “How many years is it since we last met? And where was it?” Wouldn’t that be how it would go?’