A Lady's Guide to Mischief and Mayhem (A Lady's Guide #1)(6)
“It was the first and last time I seen the man at all.” Lizzie seemed to accept Kate’s apology. “And what worried me about it was the fact that Betsy was almost falling down. I knew that gal for years and I never seen her drink enough to make her that bad off.”
Could the man have poisoned Betsy’s food or drink?
Tears shone in Lizzie’s eyes. “I should have gone after her. I would have if I wasn’t up to me ears in customers and I need this job. But still I should have gone after her. If I had, she might be here now.”
Kate reached out a hand to touch the girl’s shoulder. “You had no way of knowing what would happen. And if you had followed them, he might have killed you, too.”
Caro offered the girl her handkerchief and Lizzie blew her nose loudly into it. “Keep it.” Caro’s tone rose an octave when the barmaid tried to hand the soiled cloth back to her.
“Would it be all right with you if we put this information you’ve shared in the paper?” Kate asked. She would, of course, give the description of the man Betsy had left with to Scotland Yard. “We won’t use your name if you don’t want. But it would probably be a good idea for us to give your name to the police so that they can talk to you.”
At the mention of the police, Lizzie scowled. “You didn’t say you worked for them.”
“We don’t,” Caro explained, “but if they haven’t spoken to you before now, it probably means they don’t know about the man or what you saw. It might help them find Betsy’s killer.”
Grudgingly Lizzie nodded. “I s’pose it won’t do no harm.”
Thanking her, Kate and Caro asked a few more questions about how long Lizzie had worked at the chophouse and some information about her background.
By the time they made their way back through The White Hart and out the front door, they’d been gone for nearly an hour and the look of relief on James’s face when they emerged was almost comical.
When he’d gone to hail them a cab, Caro turned to Kate with a gleam in her eye. “How did we find a bigger clue in this case than the Yard has found in all these months?”
“I don’t know.” Kate shook her head. “But we’re going to add this interview with Lizzie to our first column. Even if this man she described isn’t the killer, at the very least he was the last person to see Betsy alive. And if he is the killer, then I for one look forward to having something concrete to warn the vulnerable women of London about.”
“And if the police object?”
“They missed their chance to interview Lizzie Grainger themselves,” Kate said firmly. “We’ll give them the information she gave us once we go to print, but they have no authority over me or my newspaper. And if they ask, I’ll tell them so.”
Chapter Two
Sir, you’ll want to see this.”
Andrew Eversham looked up from the witness statement he’d been rereading for the umpteenth time.
There had to be something here that he was missing.
Already there were four dead at the hands of the so-called “Commandments Killer” and he hadn’t as yet found a viable suspect.
It was hard to believe that before this incident, he’d been celebrated for his ability to solve cases that left other investigators scratching their heads in confusion. “What is it, Ransom?” He looked up to see the younger man holding up a newspaper. Was it already time for the papers to be out? A glance at the clock on the wall told him it was nearing dawn and he heaved a sigh. He’d been working all night and yet had found nothing in any of the documents that might point him to the killer’s identity.
Taking the paper, still wet with newsprint, from Ransom, he read the headline and uttered a curse. “Who the hell is this witness?”
A quick scan of the story revealed that one Lizzie Grainger had seen the latest victim, Betsy Creamer, leave with an unknown man on the night before she was found dead.
After nearly ten years on the job, he knew better than to take one newspaper article at face value, but The London Gazette was known for its scrupulous attention to the facts—unlike some broadsheets that invented stories out of whole cloth. The author’s name gave him another start. He’d never heard of C. Hardcastle, but if memory served, Bascomb was the surname of the paper’s owner.
“We spoke with everybody who was at The White Hart on the night Betsy Creamer disappeared, Mr. Eversham.” The chagrin on Paul Ransom’s babyish face revealed all. “I don’t know how this Grainger woman could have been missed.”
Ransom might not know how it had happened, but Eversham did.
He should never have trusted Adolphus Wargrove to conduct the interviews with the employees at the chophouse. He’d known his fellow detective liked to cut corners, but he hadn’t believed Dolph would be so sloppy with a case. It was well known within the Yard that his colleague also harbored jealousy over Eversham’s successes over the years, but to go so far as endangering lives in an effort to ensure this case went unsolved was too much.
As if conjured by Eversham’s thoughts, the man himself strode in.
“Bad break, yer lordship.” Wargrove’s grin belied his words. “How can you have missed such an important witness?”
The nickname was one that the other man had bestowed upon Eversham as soon as he’d learned that Eversham’s father, a country vicar, was a baronet’s son. Never mind that the family had long ago disowned the elder Eversham for marrying beneath him. Or that Andrew Eversham had never even met his grandfather or any of his extended family. He’d managed to dispel most of the suspicion from his fellow officers and underlings at the Yard through careful police work and success in some of the more complex cases he’d been trusted with. And yet, Dolph Wargrove, who only saw Eversham’s successes through the lens of his own failures, never missed an opportunity to remind Eversham that he didn’t quite fit in among his colleagues.