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

realized something we should have seen from the very beginning.”

“The cat came back the night Sir George died,” Hatchet

nodded in understanding. “I see where this is leading.”

“That’s right. Samson coming home was no accident.

The killer had, well, for want of a better word, catnapped

Samson. His plan was really quite clever: he knew that the

minute Sir George heard the cat crying, he’d come rushing

outside. That’s when he made his move.”

“So Clark took Samson and kept him somewhere? But

how could that be? Sir George had the servants out there

searching the grounds all the time?” Betsy asked curiously.

“That was the clue that pointed me toward Clarence

Clark,” Mrs. Jeffries said. “He was the one who searched the

carriage house, and that’s where he kept the cat. It was your

clue about the butcher complaining about the missing

chicken livers that helped bring it together in my mind.”

“Of course, he stole them to keep the cat fed,” Betsy said.

“It all makes sense now. But you haven’t told us why Clark

wanted Sir George dead.”

“I know,” Mrs. Goodge said. She poured boiling water

into the teapot. “It was because Sir George was sellin’ the

conservatory.”

“That’s right,” Mrs. Jeffries beamed approvingly. “And it

was your clue that put it all together in my mind.”

“Which one?” the cook set the teapot on the table.

“The delivery boy told you that his uncle Ennis had

once seen Sir George’s cousin cuff a porter because he’d

dropped his flowers. Coupling that bit with everything the

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inspector said about Clark’s devotion to his plants, it all

seemed to fit.”

“But what about the daughters?” Hatchet took a cup of

tea from the cook with a nod of thanks. “They all had motives. What made you realize they were innocent?”

“I didn’t know for sure,” Mrs. Jeffries confessed. “Actually, up until you men came in and said that Clark had confessed, I was of two minds about the resolution of the case.

My other suspect was Lucinda Braxton. She was the one

daughter that had the most to lose.”

“And she could have catnapped the cat,” Wiggins finished. “But she couldn’t have kept him in the carriage house. Not if Clarence Clark searched the place.”

“No, but she could have kept him elsewhere,” the housekeeper replied. “Once we found out that Charlotte Braxton had plans to leave the country, I was fairly certain that she

wasn’t the killer. Nor did I think Nina Braxton guilty.”

“But she’d lost a lot of her father’s money,” Mrs. Goodge

pointed out, “and the brokers were coming that day to tell

him so.”

“Yes, but when you think about it, Sir George had lost

money before. That’s why he’d given Nina the task of managing the investments. He might have gotten angry at her, but he’d not have tossed her out into the cold or cut her out

of his will. No, the only persons who were really at risk were

Lucinda Braxton, who stood to lose the man she loved, or

Clarence Clark, who stood to lose the thing he loved, the

conservatory.”

“So you knew that whoever catnapped Samson would

have gotten badly scratched.” Wiggins grinned. “That was

right good thinkin’ on yer part.”

“Samson was famous for putting up a good fight,” she

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laughed. “For goodness sakes, he even scratched the hand

that feeds him. Look what he did to that poor maid who got

too close to his food dish. So I knew that even if the killer

had worn gloves when he tried to handle him, that was one

cat that would manage to get his licks in somehow.”

“ ’E did it again today,” Smythe said. “He tripped up

Clark as he was makin’ a run for it.”

“Clever cat.” She took a sip of tea.

“What about the murder weapon?” Mrs. Goodge asked.

“They never found it.”

“I don’t think it can be proved, but I’ll warrant that the

murder weapon melted.” Mrs. Jeffries said calmly.

“Melted?” Wiggins exclaimed.

“How could that be?” Betsy asked.

“Go on, tell us ‘ow you sussed that out,” Smythe urged.

“It was an icicle. Clark pulled it off the side of the garden

shed where Randall Grantham was sleeping and bashed Sir

George’s head with the thing. I expect that was the noise

that Grantham heard that originally woke him up that

night.”

“I know them big ones are ‘eavy,” Wiggins said doubtfully, “but ‘ow could someone ‘ang onto one of them slippery things with enough force to really ‘urt someone?”

“He wore gloves,” she replied. “Then he pulled Sir

George to the pond, chipped a hole in the ice and stuck his

head down in it. As soon as he was sure Sir George was dead,

he went into the greenhouse and tossed the icicle under a

table. By the time the police searched the area, the icicle had

melted.”

Wiggins looked at Mrs. Jeffries with unabashed admiration. “Cor blimey,” he said, “that does make sense. How’d you figure it out?”

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233

“The hair and the bloodstain that was found later in the

greenhouse. The icicle melted, but it left the blood and the

hair behind. The only explanation that I could think of was

an icicle. Also, I remembered a case my late husband had

once investigated. In that crime, a wife stabbed her husband

with an icicle. Mind you, she didn’t kill him, it was just a

flesh wound, but it could have been deadly if she’d not been

drunk and had hit an artery or a vital organ.”

Smythe looked at Betsy. “I ‘ope you never get that angry

at me.”

“Don’t be daft,” she laughed. “But if I do, you’re in for it.

I don’t drink.”

“I’m right glad this case got solved by Christmas,” Wiggins said. “It makes it nice and tidy. One of these days, I shall write an account of our adventures, and this one’ll be

called ‘The Last Breath of a Silent Knight’. That sounds

good, doesn’t it?”

“I hate to point this out to you, Wiggins,” Hatchet said

apologetically. “But Sir George was a baronet, not a

knight.”

“I know that,” Wiggins replied. “But there’s not much

difference between ‘em, exceptin’ that one’s hereditary, the

other usually isn’t. They’re both ‘sirs’. Besides, ‘The Last

Breath of a Silent Baron’ just doesn’t have the same ring to

it, does it?”

They all agreed that it did not.

Later that evening, after everyone had gone to bed, Mrs.

Jeffries came