“I don’t understand; what does this mean?”
“I don’t know yet, but I intend to find out. Can you face more questions, John?”
John Sedgewick took an already soiled handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his eyes and nose. “Yes.Yes, I’ll try, Miss Dobbs. And I am so sorry. . . .”
Maisie took her seat and raised her hand. “Don’t apologize. Grief should be aired, not buried. Do you know if your wife was also acquainted with a woman called Charlotte Waite?”
Sedgewick looked up at Maisie. “The Waite girl? Why, yes she was. Again, it was a long time ago, long before we met. I say, what is all this about, Miss Dobbs?”
“I’m not sure, John, I am simply picking up loose threads.”
“Charlotte and Lydia were part of the same—coterie, I think you’d call them. You know, a group of young girls who spend time together on Saturdays, have tea together, and then spend their allowances on trifles, that sort of thing.”
Maisie nodded, though as a young girl there had been no coterie for her, no trifles, only more errands to run and her chores below stairs to perform as efficiently and quickly as possible, leaving her more time to study.
“But they grew apart, you know, as people do. Charlotte was very wealthy, as was Lydia. Pippin was part of a certain social circle that, frankly, she did not choose to belong to as they matured. I think they all had a falling out, but as I said, this was long before Pippin and I began courting.”
“Was a woman called Rosamund part of the group?”
Sedgewick sighed, and pressed his hands to his eyes. “The name rings a bell. I might have heard the name ‘Rosie’—I don’t think I heard ‘Rosamund’; . . . no . . . not ‘Rosamund.’”
Maisie prepared to ask her next question, when he spoke first. “You know, I have just remembered something odd. Mind you, I don’t know if it’s of any use to you.”
“Go on.”
“Well, it’s about the Waite girl; her father, really. It must have been before we were married.” Sedgewick scratched his head, “I’m as bad with time as I am with names. Yes, it was before we were married, because I remember being in Pippin’s mother’s parlor. Now it’s coming back to me. I arrived at the house on my bicycle just as a rather large motor car was leaving. Too fast if you ask me, I remember the gravel spitting up and hitting me in the face. Anyway, the housekeeper let me in, said that Pippin was in the parlor. As I walked in she was there, drying her eyes: She’d been crying. I pleaded with her to tell me what was the matter, but she would only say that she had had some sort of crossed words with Mr. Waite, Charlotte’s father. I threatened to go after him, but she wouldn’t allow it and said that if I did, then she would never see me again. That it would never happen again, or something like that.”
“And she never revealed the cause of the discord?”
“Never. I suspected it might have to do with Charlotte. I thought perhaps that Pippin had told a lie on her behalf—you know, saying that Charlotte was with her, when she was really somewhere else. Apparently Charlotte was quite rebellious as a young girl. See, my memory’s warming up now!”
“Did your wife ever see Joseph Waite again? Or hear from him?”
“No, I don’t think she did. She never mentioned it. After we were married, we settled into a very ordinary life, especially here on Bluebell Avenue.”
Sedgewick looked drawn, almost overcome with fatigue.
“I will leave you in peace soon, John. But first, I understand that your housekeeper found Mrs. Sedgewick?”
“Yes, Mrs. Noakes. She comes in daily to clean and dust, prepare supper, that sort of thing. She had gone out for a couple of hours, to the shops, and when she came home, she found Pippin in the dining room. It appears she’d had someone to tea, which was unusual, because she hadn’t said that she was expecting a visitor or mentioned it to Mrs. Noakes.”
“And you were at work?”
“Yes, in the City. I’m a civil engineer, Miss Dobbs, so I was out at a site all afternoon. Plenty of people saw me, but of course, I was also traveling between places, which interests the police enormously. They sit there with their maps and train timetables trying to work out if I could have come home, murdered my wife, and been back on a building site in time for my next alibi.”
“I see. Would you show me the dining room?”
In contrast to the untidy kitchen and drawing room, the dining room was immaculate, though evidence of police presence was everywhere throughout the house. It was clear that a thorough investigation had taken place in the room where Philippa Sedgewick had met her death.
“There wasn’t any blood to speak of.” The tendons in Sedgewicks throat became taut as he spoke of his wife’s murder. “Apparently the murderer drugged her with something first, before . . . before using the knife.”
“Yes.” Maisie walked around the room, observing but not touching. All surfaces were clean, with only a thin layer of dust. She walked to the window and opened the curtains to allow natural light to augment the grainy electric illumination. Fingerprinting was used widely now and Maisie could see residues of powder where police had tested for dabs left by the murderer. Yes, Stratton’s men had done a thorough job.
As if reading her mind, Sedgewick spoke. “Inspector Stratton isn’t such a bad chap. No, not too bad. It’s that sergeant of his that makes my skin crawl, Caldwell. He was a nasty piece of work. Have you met him?”
Maisie was preoccupied with scanning the nooks and crannies of the dining room, but an image of the small, brisk man with a pointed nose and a cold stare came to mind. “Only once or twice.”
“Just as well. He all but accused me when they took me in for questioning. Stratton was kinder. Mind you, I’ve heard that they do that, you know, play nice and nasty so that the suspect either gets unsettled or too relaxed before the other goes for the jugular.”
