Mrs. Jeffries & the Silent Knight by Emily Brightwell (black female authors .TXT) 📕

further up the social ladder one went, the less inclined they were to talk. Some of them even seemed to have the idea they were completely above the law.

“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

68

Emily Brightwell

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

70

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