Silent Witnesses Read online

‘A good decision. Why are you not happy with it? You could lose your eye, for all I know.’ I threw a glance at Hattie. She leant against the window sill, chin trembling.

  Warren turned his head away. ‘It’s just… It’s because Father never listens to anything I say. He discounts my wishes, and only sees his own. I am twenty-five, Liz. Twenty-five and he treats me like a small boy. Anyway. Don’t worry about me. I’m all right.’

  ‘Are you not in pain?’

  ‘No. It’s the morphia. I’m sure it will wear off soon.’ He picked at his fingernails.

  ‘Strange. The surgeon must have given you very little, because your pupil reaction is normal.’ I scanned his face. I knew he was not saying something. Or, in fact, that he’d been lying. But about what precisely, I couldn’t tell. ‘Have the police been informed?’

  ‘Yes,’ Hattie said from across the room. ‘A sergeant took Warren’s statement earlier. Father asked him to send their best detective. So far, no one has come, but it’s only been two hours or so.’

  ‘Hum. Would you please telephone the police headquarters? I understand that Inspector McCurley is leading the investigation into the Railway Strangler. He questioned me about the first victim. And perhaps it would help if you told him that I asked for him? I’m sure he remembers my name.’

  Warren’s gaze followed Hattie as she left the room. Perplexed, he looked at me. ‘Why are you… Oh. Oh! You believe the Railway Strangler might have done this?’ Shock spread over his features. ‘But that’s nonsense!’

  I stood and paced to the window, wondering what all this was about. Why I couldn’t shed the feeling that Warren was lying. But why would he?

  ‘Do you—’ I broke off when Hattie came back in.

  ‘Inspector McCurley will be here in a moment,’ she said.

  ‘Really? But that’s entirely unnecessary!’ Warren protested.

  I said to him, ‘You know that the Railway Strangler left a copy of my portrait for the police to find. It’s a far stretch but…I wonder if he saw us together last night.’

  ‘What do you mean by “saw us together”?’ Hattie asked. ‘You said you dropped her off.’

  ‘He dropped me off and then he…kissed me.’

  ‘What? You did what? Warren! How could you? She’s my friend!’

  Warren groaned, shut his eye and leant back. ‘So? I was respectful, wasn’t I?’ He opened his eye and directed it at me.

  ‘Yes. You were.’

  ‘And you?’ Hattie jerked a finger in my direction. ‘Are you going to break his heart now that he has only one eye left?’

  I opened my mouth but was interrupted by Warren. ‘She’s not interested. At least that’s what she said. So there’s no possibility for heart-break whatsoever. Just a small dent to my ego.’

  Hattie blew out a breath.

  ‘What about your engagement?’ I asked.

  Warren levelled a cold stare at me. ‘It’s called off. And I don’t expect Father will be able to find a one-eyed pirate princess for me any time soon.’

  A sob erupted from Hattie.

  ‘Will you allow me to examine your injury?’ I scooted closer.

  Warren threw up his hand. ‘I am in enough pain already.’

  Puzzled, I drew back.

  He continued, ‘So far, all of our encounters have ended in pain. So, no, thank you, but I’ll survive without you checking my eye.’

  ‘What the deuce are you talking about?’

  He lifted a finger. ‘Your shifting of the broken bones of my poor nose was painful and entirely unnecessary.’ He lifted a second finger. ‘As was you breaking my nose before it had a chance to heal.’

  ‘She did what?’ Hattie cried.

  Warren licked his lips. ‘Would you care to explain it to her, Liz?’

  Without turning my gaze away from him I said to Hattie, ‘I broke into his house in the dead of night to confront him about the drawing. We had a…scuffle.’

  ‘A scuffle?’

  ‘I gave her a black eye, and she broke my nose,’ Warren supplied. ‘Did you know her gardener has been teaching her boxing?’

  Hattie gasped.

  ‘He doesn’t…’ I shook my head and waved the argument away.

  ‘And then,’ Warren said cheerfully. ‘Then you have the guts to explain away my feelings for you, and the next thing that happens is this.’ He pointed at the bandage on his face.

  I couldn’t believe it. ‘You are blaming me for the attack?’

  He dropped his gaze.

  My shoulders sagged. ‘Well, I guess in a way I drew you into this. After you drew me.’ Slowly, I pushed away, too tired to continue the conversation. Too tired of not getting anywhere, of always limping ten steps behind the murderer. I needed to talk to Uriel. Right away. ‘I’ll see you later.’

  I grabbed my bag, walked up to the door, and threw it open.

  McCurley stood on the other side, fist poised to knock. ‘Is Mr Amaury awake?’

  I nodded. Neither of us gave the slightest indication that we knew each other from more than the brief meeting we’d had between inspector and witness.

  ‘Would you mind waiting just a moment, Dr Arlington? I will need a statement from you.’

  ‘Of course. Hattie, are you coming? Unless she is needed here?’

  ‘Later, perhaps,’ McCurley said, and shut the door behind us.

  Hattie and I waited in the corridor. It wasn’t long until McCurley emerged. He announced that he would take my statement down in the stables, where he would also examine Warren’s carriage. He added that Mrs Heathcote was no longer needed.

  Unspeaking, I followed him. He inspected the shattered window, the frame, and the door. He looked inside the carriage and stared at the blood on the floor. ‘He comes home with a bloody handkerchief pressed to his face. Hum…’

  McCurley dipped a finger into the congealed blood on floor and bench. ‘The spatter looks odd. I don’t see any small droplets. If Mr Amaury told the truth, the blood must have fallen from a height of about four feet. When a drop hits the floor, it bursts. But there’s nothing like that here.’

  He examined the shards, their number and size, peeked under the benches of the carriage, and then climbed inside. With a soft grunt, he pushed his pinkie through the hole in the back wall. ‘Very odd indeed.’

  He unplugged his finger, squatted down and gazed up at the hole, and how the light fell through it. Then he looked back at the bench and to me. ‘Does your friend have any reason to lie about the attack?’

  23

  When we returned to his room, Warren’s eye shifted from my cold expression to McCurley’s unfathomable one.

  ‘Dr Arlington will remove your bandage,’ McCurley said, his voice flat.

  Warren swallowed, and sat farther up. ‘I c-c-can’t allowed that. The surgeon ordered n-n-not to touch or rem-move the bandage under any c-circumstances if I wish to keep my eye.’

  McCurley titled his head a fraction. ‘Dr Arlington, in your expert opinion, is it possible to do further damage to Mr Amaury’s injured eye by carefully lifting the bandage off the wound?’

  ‘If a trained physician does it, someone such as myself, I believe it to be quite safe.’

  ‘Go ahead then,’ McCurley said.

  Paling, Warren held up a hand. ‘I c-can’t allow it. Except you p-p-present me with a w-warrant.’

  McCurley walked to the chair Warren’s father had occupied earlier. He picked at a cushion, sat down, and regarded the large oil painting that hung above Warren’s bed. A hunting scene. ‘Well, Mr Amaury, you have two options. One, you can tell us the truth now. Or two, you can insist that I spend my time on this investigation. I will write notes, examine the rather odd blood splatter in the carriage, the even stranger angle of the bullet hole, and the queer fact that the glass shards cannot be arranged around a small point of impact — such as one would expect from a bullet.’

  The longer McCurley spoke, the more fidgety Warren grew.

  ‘You see, Mr Amaury, I neve
r trust witness accounts. I trust evidence. And the evidence I’ve seen tells me that the bullet was fired from inside the carriage, and the blood did not come from a fresh wound. Were you keeping it in a jar? Did it clot so that you had to rub it hard into your handkerchief to make it look like it had come from your wound? But then, perhaps you were pleasantly surprised that clots do look like pieces of flesh from afar, do they not?’

  ‘You show no signs of shock, pain, or blood loss, Warren,’ I said softly.

  ‘It appears to me that you have committed fraud,’ Mc Curley cut in. ‘Now you must decide if you also wish to obstruct my ongoing investigation into the Railway Strangler murders.’

  A shudder went through Warren. Sighing, he shut his eye. ‘She doesn’t need to remove the bandage. I’m not injured. I haven’t been attacked. It’s like you said. I had a jar of pig’s blood under the bench. I spread it on myself, the seat, and the floor, and I used the empty jar to break the window at the same moment that I shot a hole in the back wall of the carriage.’

  I approached the bed and sat on the mattress. ‘Why, Warren?’

  He kept his gaze pinned to his blanket. ‘I saw no way out.’

  ‘Really? Have you any idea of the damage you have caused?’ Angry, I stood. ‘You hurt your mother, your father. You broke your bride’s heart. You pretend to be in love with me, pretend to be severely injured — about to lose your eye — and you don’t think anything of it? Have you not for a moment considered Hattie’s feelings? Your own twin sister? Didn’t you see her crying her eyes out? And all of this suffering just so you don’t have to stand up to your own parents?’

  He looked up then, searching for words. ‘Well, I…’

  ‘I don’t want to hear it. Look around you, Warren. All this luxury. You have been spoon-fed your whole life. Twenty-five years. No worries. No responsibilities. Of course your father leads you around on a leash. He doesn’t see you can walk without it!’

  He was pale as a ghost when I turned away and strode from the room, the mansion, the majestic driveway and premises, to finally come to a stumbling halt in the street.

  ‘Well, that was interesting,’ McCurley said.

  ‘Damn it to hell and back!’ I cried.

  ‘What was all that about?’

  ‘His father is trying to force him to marry. I know I probably judge him too harshly, but this — this — is definitely going too far. I believed the Railway Strangler did that to him. He even let me believe it!’

  ‘It was an obvious conclusion. I wonder if he toyed with it. If deceiving you was part of his plan all along.’

  ‘I don’t care!’ I kept stomping ahead, hoping to shed some of my anger.

  ‘He will be prosecuted. As will his accomplice, the surgeon. If the man even was a surgeon.’

  ‘I know. Warren deserves it. I don’t have time for his nonsense now. Uriel is back and I want to talk to him about the portraits.’

  McCurley grabbed my arm and brought me to an abrupt halt. ‘Mr Crocker is back? Why didn’t you tell me that before?’

  ‘I only learned about it last night. A lot has happened since then.’

  ‘You will not talk to Mr Crocker. I will. Right away, in fact.’ He looked back. ‘We just passed the police carriage. I could ask the driver to—’

  ‘You won’t get far with Uriel. He is the most level-headed man I know. And he’s a lawyer. If he gets the faintest inkling that he is being investigated for a crime, he won’t say a word. You’d have to arrest him, or at least get a warrant. He is like you. He knows how to use silence to his advantage.’

  Unconvinced, McCurley cut a sideways glance at me.

  ‘You don’t have anything to lose if you let me talk to him for a few minutes first.’

  He gave me a single nod. ‘Do you have your revolver with you?’

  ‘No, I…didn’t think I would need it.’

  * * *

  We alighted a block from Uriel’s office. McCurley walked with me to the entrance of the brownstone building. His revolver was hidden under my jacket that was folded over my arm.

  ‘Fire a shot through the window if he threatens you, and I’ll get there in ten seconds.’

  ‘I doubt it will come to that.’ I left him standing on the pavement.

  When I entered Uriel’s office and he looked at me in shock, my heart wilted. I wiped all emotions off my face and shut the door.

  ‘I’m sorry, but…’ He trailed off when I plopped down in a chair opposite him, a massive desk between us.

  ‘You can’t be here, Elizabeth.’

  ‘No Hello Liz today?’

  He folded his hands in front of him. ‘My apologies, but I have to ask you to leave. A client will be arriving in a minute.’

  ‘I was told your client is to arrive in about forty-five minutes. I will take only ten. You stole my portraits from Warren’s sketchbook. Why?’

  He sagged in what must have been relief, but…that couldn’t be. As though having been discovered was making him feel better.

  ‘I knew that she took the sketchbook,’ he began. ‘Hattie, that is. I wasn’t sure if she just wanted to keep it away from Warren, or if she wanted to destroy your portraits. So I decided to make sure they were gone for good. I knew you didn’t want them to end up in the hands of a stranger.’

  ‘But they did.’

  Uriel put his face in his palms. ‘Yes, and with that, all the problems began.’

  It felt like he had dumped a bucket of ice water over me. ‘Explain.’

  ‘My wife found them that same night. In my pocket. She thinks we’re having an affair, for Christ’s sake!’ He dropped his hands flat on the desk, lent back and groaned up at the ceiling.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I tried to explain, but she wouldn't listen, wouldn't believe anything I said. She threatened a divorce. So I took her and the children to Cape Cod. We hadn’t had a vacation for a long time anyway.’

  ‘What did she do with the portraits?’

  ‘She destroyed them, of course.’

  ‘Do you happen to have a walking stick with a dog’s head?’

  Puzzled, he drew back. ‘What? No. You know me. I don’t like running around like a masher.’

  Funny. The same term had been used to describe Ms Munro’s lover. ‘Did you see your wife destroy the portraits?’

  ‘Of course… Well, no. I didn’t see her burn them, but why would she lie to me about that? She has absolutely no reason to keep them.’

  I stood. ‘I need to talk to your wife.’

  Wild-eyed, Uriel jumped from his chair. ‘No, I can't allow that. You have no idea what I’ve been through this last month.’

  ‘No, I can’t imagine.’ With that, I left.

  I met McCurley down in the street, and told him what I’d learned.

  He told me he would go on up to ask Uriel a few more questions, and then talk to his wife. I agreed, because it seemed the best strategy, given that my appearance at Uriel's home would be seen as an affront. And Uriel's wife would close up like an oyster the moment she laid eyes on me.

  We bade each other farewell after I extracted a promise from McCurley — that he would send a note as soon as he learned anything new.

  * * *

  It was in the early afternoon when Margery entered my office to tell me I had a visitor.

  I rose from my chair the moment Sergeant Boyle stepped into the room. He wasn’t wearing his uniform. I knew immediately that something was wrong.

  He shut the door and waved at his clothes. ‘My apologies. I don’t want anyone to know the police are here. Inspector McCurley sent me. He’s talked to Mrs Crocker. As you know, she found your portraits. She was very upset and believes you are having an affair with her husband. She has consulted her brother on whether or not to divorce Mr Crocker. During that discussion, she showed him the evidence, as she calls it. She did note, though, that her brother appeared oddly stricken by the drawings. He tore one to pieces before she could stop him. She found that very puzzl
ing, but he explained that he was overcome with fury, that he couldn’t endure the thought of his lovely sister being betrayed by her husband. Mrs Crocker told her brother she wanted to retain the second portrait as evidence. Interestingly, she was able to produce it upon the inspector’s request. Meaning to say, it was put back after it was taken to the photographer. Inspector McCurley is absolutely certain that the portrait Mrs Crocker showed him is the original.’

  With each of Boyle’s words, I grew colder. ‘Is he the murderer? The brother?’ I croaked.

  ‘It appears so. Mrs Crocker’s brother — Mr Haywood — works as a hygiene inspector for two large dairy companies. According to his wife, he’d wanted to be a physician and was accepted to Harvard Medical School. However, he aborted his studies. The reasons are unclear, but hopefully the inspector will find out more.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘Inspector McCurley?’

  ‘Yes. No! Mr Haywood.’

  Boyle sucked in a breath and his expression grew apologetic. ‘That is the reason Inspector McCurley sent me. For your protection. Mr Haywood’s whereabouts are unknown.’

  I stood and paced the room. ‘What do you mean, unknown?’

  ‘The inspector enquired at the Elm Farm Company — one of the two large dairy companies Mr Haywood works for, the other being the Boston Dairy Company — but the suspect has not been seen since the day Mr Crocker took his family to Cape Cod.’

  ‘But that would only be one day of—’

  Boyle held up his hand. ‘Mr Haywood did not ask to take a holiday. He left work without telling his employers of his plans.’

  ‘That is…worrisome.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Boyle, and dropped into a chair.

  ‘Do you have a revolver?’ I asked.

  Boyle looked offended. ‘Of course not! I’m a policeman, not some…Wild West dandy.’

  ‘Well, good that I have one.’ I left the office to fetch my gun and ammunition, and informed Margery to send away all remaining patients.

  * * *

  The waiting clawed at my nerves. Boyle seemed quite relaxed and to be enjoying the refreshments Margery had prepared for all of us. I didn’t allow Klara to go out into the garden, so instead we read books and drew pictures. Zachary kept working outside, to keep an eye out for us.