“Unfortunate, but true,” he took a sip from his glass.
“But in this case, everyone in the household seems quite ea66
Mrs. Jeffries and the Silent Knight
67
ger to speak to me, unless, of course, they’ve a meeting with
their solicitors.” He sighed. “Sir George has three daughters, all of whom were home last night when he was murdered, but I didn’t get to speak with them for long at all.
They had some sort of meeting with their solicitors.”
“They’ve already hired lawyers?” Mrs. Jeffries sank down
into the chair opposite the inspector. “Gracious, are they
suspects?”
“No, no, I didn’t mean to imply anything like that.” He
waved his hand dismissively. “The solicitors were already
scheduled to come to see the family.” He broke off and
frowned. “At least I think they were already scheduled to
come to the house. I really must ask someone.”
“You certainly should, sir,” she said quickly. “Solicitors
generally meet with people for a reason, and if the appointment had been set some time ago, it could well have something to do with Sir George’s murder.”
“Yes.” He nodded. “I see what you mean. The solicitors
might have come to the house expecting to meet with Sir
George, not find him dead and gone to the morgue.”
“But I’m sure you’d already thought of that,” she said
easily. “It should be simple to find out when the appointment was set and who the solicitors were actually expecting to meet with.”
“True.” He took another sip of his sherry. “Everyone, including the servants, speaks quite freely. No one appears to be hiding anything, though it is difficult to get a coherent
account out of any of them. As a matter of fact, we’ve still to
interview two of the houseguests and a cousin who lives on
the premises.” He yawned. “We wanted to have a chat with
everyone in the household today, but by the time we’d finished searching the victim’s room and getting the gardener’s account of finding the body, everyone had left the house. It
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was the oddest thing, both the houseguests had gone off to
the shops to buy Christmas presents, and the cousin had
disappeared completely. No one had a clue where he’d gone.
I don’t understand it, Mrs. Jeffries, it’s almost as though
none of them thought anything out of the ordinary had occurred. They simply went right on with their daily activities as though finding a corpse with a bashed-in skull was something that happened every day.”
“Some people aren’t very sensitive,” she said softly. Unfortunately, the inspector was quite sensitive, and she could see that he was greatly distressed by the cavalier attitude of
the household.
“I suppose not,” he agreed. “I just hope I can catch the person who did this. I don’t think Sir George Braxton was a particularly nice person, but no one deserves to be murdered.”
“You will find the killer,” she replied stoutly. “You always do, sir. You’re an excellent detective.”
“Thank you,” he replied. “Another reason we didn’t
make much progress today was that we had to go back to
the Yard.”
“That’s quite a distance, sir. It must have been very
inconvenient.” She held her breath, hoping that he’d not
gone back to be told that Inspector Nigel Nivens was horning in on the case. The staff hated Inspector Nivens. The man had spent years trying to undermine their inspector.
“It wasn’t so much inconvenient as it was alarming. Chief
Inspector Barrows asked for an update on the case.”
“But you’d just started your investigation.”
Witherspoon nodded in agreement. “That’s what I told
him, and to his credit, he said he understood and that we
must conduct a thorough investigation. But he also said the
department was under a lot of pressure to solve this murder.”
Mrs. Jeffries and the Silent Knight
69
“What does that mean?” she asked. She suspected she
knew exactly what it meant.
Witherspoon sighed. “Apparently, the deceased is some
sort of distant cousin to the queen and, well, Barrows
hinted that it would be a good idea to have it resolved by
Christmas.”
“That’s only a week away,” she said softly. “But I’m sure
you’ll do just fine, sir. I take it you’ll be going back to the
Braxton house tomorrow?”
“We’ve no choice. As I said, there are still a number of
people in the household we must interview, and I want to
have another chance to speak with Sir George’s daughters.
Though I must admit, getting any sort of sense of who was
where and doing what is a bit muddled.”
“Muddled?” she repeated. “How so?”
He took another sip of his sherry and told her about his encounters with the dead man’s children. “I don’t believe those three women are overly fond of one another,” he finished.
“You’re very perceptive, sir. Was the Home Secretary still
there when you arrived?”
“No, his assistant was waiting for us.”
“Then what happened, sir?” Mrs. Jeffries wanted to direct the conversation so that his account started from the time he and Barnes had arrived at the Braxton household.
He continued with his recitation of the day’s activities,
and Mrs. Jeffries listened patiently, occasionally asking a
question or making a comment. When it became clear his
narrative was taking a good deal longer than usual and that
his dinner was in danger of getting cold, she ushered him
into the dining room, and they continued their discussion
while he ate.
By the time the inspector had finished his last bite of
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Emily Brightwell
dessert, he felt much better about the case. “I believe I’ll
take Fred for a quick walk before I retire.” He rose to his
feet. “Is he down in the kitchen?”
“Yes, sir, he was lying on the rug earlier.” Mrs. Jeffries
began to stack his dishes onto a tray. “Do bundle up, sir. It’s
still very cold outside.”
“We’ll just do a short walk.” The inspector went downstairs and pulled Fred’s lead off the hook by the kitchen door. Hearing the familiar voice and the rattle of his lead,
Fred leapt to his feet and bounced up and down in anticipation of going out. It took Witherspoon a few moments to get the lead attached to the collar, but he finally got Fred
settled enough to complete the
