Murder at Renard's (Rose Simpson Mysteries Book 4) Page 18

  ‘What?’ The inspector looked aghast.

  ‘Nothing else makes any sense. The scream was too loud. It was far too theatrical to be a proper scream.’

  ‘But if what you say is true,’ said Inspector Deacon slowly, ‘either the fire and the murder are unconnected, although it seems a remarkable coincidence that the fire should break out at the very same moment our murderer contemplates murder, or – ’

  ‘The murderer isn’t any one of our suspects,’ said Sergeant Perkins.

  They had all taken a moment or two to digest the possibility that the murderer was some shadowy figure from outside the shop, who had taken advantage of the fashion event to undertake his ghastly deed. If the murderer and the arsonist were indeed one and the same, it was also to be realised that a disturbing degree of planning had been undertaken to facilitate Sylvia’s murder. The notion that her death had been a spur of the moment act, carried out in a moment of fury, was diminished. There was something rather comforting about the thought and yet also frightening, if that made any sense at all, which Rose supposed it didn’t. And yet, could it equally be possible that the fire and the murder were not linked as it was now supposed? Could the arsonist and the murderer be no more connected than two strangers in the street? In which case, the fire would have had no more bearing on Sylvia’s death than providing a useful distraction, which the murderer had exploited, by making full use of the ensuing panic and disturbance for his own ends.

  The question foremost in Rose’s own thoughts, and to a degree in those of the two policemen who shared with her the little partially cluttered, closed in room, was why anyone, not intent on murder, should have wished to set fire to Madame Renard’s establishment. To confuse the issue further, it had been no serious act of arson. The fire had been quickly put out and the damage to property had been minimal, so that the physical destruction of the shop had not been the goal. It appeared then that the aim had been only to ruin the fashion event, to have it live on in the minds of those who had attended as having been something of a disaster, never to be repeated. But why? Who could have been so against the event as to take such physical action? Of course that question in itself opened up other motives, motives that must be explored and investigated almost as keenly as the murder itself.

  In the end, it was Inspector Deacon who summed up all their thoughts.

  ‘We need to find out who set light to the shop and why. It is as imperative to this inquiry as finding out the identity of the murderer, whether or not the two acts are linked.’ He gave a sigh. ‘If what you say is correct, Miss Simpson, it very much looks as if the fire was started by a member of the audience.’

  ‘I think, Inspector, that finding the arsonist may be easier said than done,’ said Rose, after a further moment of reflection. ‘You see, almost everyone would have been facing the other way. I suppose that is why the person chose the very moment that they did to do it. Lady Celia was creating a scene; she was making no attempt to speak quietly despite Madame Renard’s desperate attempts to encourage her to do so. Believe me, many of those present would have been fascinated by watching such a spectacle. And the remainder of the audience would have been crowding around Mary and myself trying to get details of the elusive silver gown. So you see, my point is this, no one would have been looking in the direction of the candelabra or the curtains.’

  ‘That said, there is always a chance someone might have seen something. Some of the men, for instance. I doubt they were particularly interested in that dress, no matter how magnificent it was, even if their womenfolk were. We will need to have a look at Miss Jennings’ register and interview everyone whom attended this evening’s event and was still at the shop when the fire broke out.’

  ‘Mary did make a note of each customer as they left,’ Rose agreed, ‘or rather, those who left before the fire. She made a note against their name as to whether or not they had made an appointment for a fitting or wanted to have another look at the outfits on their next visit. So from Mary’s list we should be able to gather who was still here when the curtain caught alight. I should perhaps warn you that we are talking of a great many people, particularly when one includes the various guests of customers. You see, the vast majority of the people stayed on until the end. Very few of them left in the middle of the show.’

  There was a faint but audible groan from Sergeant Perkins.

  ‘Yes, I know, Sergeant, a boring and laborious task which might quite well prove fruitless, but necessary all the same,’ said his superior.

  ‘I know that we have all but dismissed the idea, but I suppose there is no possibility that it was an accident, the fire I mean?’ Rose asked.

  ‘None whatsoever, I’m afraid. We haven’t left that possibility to chance either. Our men have tested it. There is no way, given where the candelabra was positioned, that the curtains could have caught alight other than that one of the drapes was deliberately held over the flame of at least one of the candles. But cheer up, Perkins.’ The inspector paused to grin at his sergeant. ‘We’ll need to interview the customers and their guests anyway about the murder, unless we happen to stumble on the culprit before, that is. It’s just possible that one of them may have noticed someone going into, or coming out of, the dressing room at around about the time Miss Beckett was killed.’

  ‘It’s unfortunate that so many people congregated in the corridor while they were waiting for Mary to unlock the storeroom door, the one that backed onto the street,’ said Rose. ‘It would have been easy enough for the murderer to choose his moment to slip out of the dressing room unobserved and join the queue.’

  ‘Our murderer was rather fortunate that no one chose to go into the dressing room to see if that room had a door backing out onto the street,’ said the inspector.

  ‘Yes, he was. I suppose that was in part due to Madame Renard’s quick thinking. She acted almost immediately when the fire broke out. I think it may have come as a welcome relief. By that I mean it was a means of getting herself away from Lady Celia and her anger. When Madame Renard asked Mary to get the key from the kitchen, she deliberately spoke very loudly so that her voice could be heard over the din. I suppose that she hoped it would bring some calm to the proceedings. But it did mean that everyone was more interested in following Mary around than looking for an alternative exit. Why, one or two of our more impatient customers even followed her into the kitchen in search of the key, would you believe?’

  ‘That girl, Miss Simpson, she has been in with the policemen a very long time,’ said Marcel Girard, eyeing the door to the next room suspiciously.

  ‘Well, that inspector fellow’s a friend of hers, isn’t he?’ said Jacques, half sitting, half reclining, languidly on the settee. All of a sudden he was feeling tired and lethargic.

  He was beginning to find his friend’s endless pacing of the room irritating in the extreme. For one thing, to watch him was boringly repetitive. Due to the modest dimensions of the room, the designer was compelled to repeatedly walk around the room’s perimeter, which meant that he trod on the same bit of well-worn rug again and again. At first Jacques had found this oddly mesmerising, predicting which precise bit of carpet his friend’s foot would tread on each time he passed. Now though he found it merely tedious. His annoyance and frustration came out in his words.

  ‘What did you expect, Marcel? She’s probably telling that police inspector this very minute about all our little weaknesses and defects, everything we have ever done wrong, reciting verbatim every word that we’ve ever spoken against poor Sylvia. I am surprised your ears aren’t burning, Mama, given all the times you’ve called Sylvia insolent and lazy.’

  ‘Jacques!’ exclaimed his mother clearly horrified. ‘How can you say such awful things and at a time like this? To be so cruel, so heartless, to treat this like a game put on for your entertainment when that poor, dear girl is lying dead, I do not know where.’

  ‘In the mortuary, I imagine, and I’m doing no such thing, Mother,’ said Jacques, nevertheless r
ighting himself so that he was sitting up straight and now all but perched on the very edge of the sofa. He passed a hand over his eyes so that his expression was partially hidden, although his voice took on a serious note. ‘I suppose it’s because I don’t know what else to say or do, or how best to answer Marcel’s damn fool of a question. They don’t tell you, do they, how utterly boring and unbearable this waiting around to be interviewed is?’ He threw a glance at his mother who looked no less appalled than before. His voice softened, although a look of anguish appeared on his face. ‘Do you not think I feel Sylvia’s death as deeply as any of you? Perhaps more so.’

  ‘I do not know what to believe,’ said Madame Renard miserably. She stared at her hands and played with a ring on the middle finger of her right hand. The bangles on her arm jingled albeit rather more sedately than was their custom. ‘It is all so unreal. It is like a bad dream. I keep expecting to wake up any moment, but I know that I won’t. What will this all look like tomorrow in the daylight, I wonder? Will I find Sylvia’s blood on the floor? And this waiting, yes, it is almost the worst part of it all.’

  ‘Well, I shouldn’t worry, Madame,’ said Marcel from his position in the corner of the room. He had been watching the exchange between mother and son with some interest. ‘The policemen, they will want to speak to you next, yes? It is your shop and Miss Beckett, she was your employee.’

  If the designer had intended that his words should provide the proprietor with some comfort, then he was to be disappointed. Madame Renard went pale and visibly shuddered. Her arms, bedecked in their bangles, clattered noisily against the sofa’s armrest, while her fingernails tapped the polished wood restlessly. Her eyes, almost impossibly large, looked frightened, reminding Marcel of a rabbit caught in the headlights of a motor car. Dark smudges had appeared under her eyes like badly applied make up, contrasting starkly with her deathly pallor. He found himself moved by the woman’s wretched state and, looking across at his friend, saw that her son looked equally concerned. Jacques felt a stab of compassion for his mother which, not surprisingly, exceeded his friend’s feelings. It was not only that she was his mother, but that he alone knew how much Renard’s meant to her; it was as much her child as he was himself, and he felt her suffering as keenly as if it had been his own.

  For now at least Renard’s had become soiled and tainted. It was impossible for any one of them not to feel that. A sense of evil permeated the shop as strongly as the smell of smoke from the ruined drape. It was not hard to imagine that his mother had recoiled, if only temporarily, from her once cherished establishment. He stretched out a hand and clasped one of her hands in his. He was surprised how very cold it was; he might have been touching the hand of a ghost.

  As it happened Madame Renard was thinking about a ghost of sorts. She was wondering if she would ever be able to rid her mind of the dreadful image of the dead girl that had greeted her so forcefully when she had peered into the room and looked beyond Rose’s kneeling form. She had lingered awkwardly in the doorway, too afraid to go any further into the room and yet reluctant to leave, for appearance’s sake if nothing else. Even in a highly agitated state faced with the worst catastrophe that could be imagined, Madame Renard had been conscious that it would not be considered the done thing at all for a proprietor to leave her shop assistant to deal with a dead body, even a shop assistant with as much experience of murder as Rose Simpson. It was upon such thoughts that Madame Renard became vaguely aware that her son was talking to her and, as she listened carefully, the words floated towards her as if they were coming from a long way away.

  ‘You must request that Rose be there with you, when you are interviewed,’ Jacques was saying. ‘I would accompany you myself, only they wouldn’t allow it. The inspector will want to interview us separately. They won’t want our answers to be influenced by what others say.’

  He might well have added that the police would be hoping to find contradictions in their statements that they could use to their advantage, to trip up the guilty party, making them slip and stumble into a confession. He thought these things, but refrained from saying them out loud.

  ‘And Rose?’ mumbled his mother, through lips that barely moved.

  ‘They must have asked her all the questions they intend to by now. She’ll have told them everything she knows.’

  ‘And she is one of them, is she not?’ said Marcel with something akin to distaste.

  ‘She is one of us,’ corrected Jacques firmly. ‘You said so yourself. And it was you who insisted that she should investigate on our behalf, or have you forgotten that?’

  ‘No, of course not;’ said the designer defensively. ‘But I am wondering now whether we can trust her.’

  ‘Trust her to do what?’ asked Jacques. He sounded irritated, as if he had had enough of it all.

  ‘To portray us in a good light. To not tell them anything that we rather she didn’t.’

  ‘I think it’s rather late for all that, don’t you?’ said Jacques rather wearily. ‘Knowing Rose as I do, she will try to be as fair to us as possible. She won’t say things just for the sake of it. But I should warn you that she will approach this case with the object of discovering the truth.’

  ‘The truth,’ said Marcel, ‘is perhaps what we do not want.’

  Before Jacques had an opportunity to ask precisely what his friend meant, Mary, who all the while had remained wretched and silent where she sat, drawn up to the old wooden table, chose that very moment to speak.

  ‘Will she tell them everything, do you think? Everything that we have told her even if it’s not relevant, even …’ she paused, ‘… if it’s quite awful?’

  It was like a feeling of déjà vu. They all experienced it. Mary had been so quiet and withdrawn that they had again all but forgotten her existence. Her entry now into the conversation had the effect of rousing them all from their lethargy. Madame Renard in particular, who had all but slumped back in her seat, as if retreating from the world around her, now looked up not a little perplexed. As it happened, it was fortuitous that they should at that moment have become awakened and alert. For only seconds later the door, which obscured the policemen from their sight, opened and Rose Simpson came out.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Rose Simpson’s interview could not be said to have ended well. She did not think so and neither did Inspector Deacon, or even young Sergeant Perkins come to that. True, it had started promisingly enough, even if the inspector appeared slightly more formal towards her than she would have liked, or was strictly necessary, given their past association. As the interview had unfolded, she felt that they had reverted to their usual positons albeit rather grudgingly on the inspector’s part. He had started to include her in a review of the case, had shared his thoughts and had considered her opinions. They might have been back at Dareswick Hall with all its grandeur and finery, instead of Madame Renard’s pokey and suffocating little flat. Instead of sipping lukewarm tea made by herself on a stove in an area that resembled more a cupboard than a kitchen, hot tea and biscuits might have been brought in to them by an attentive footman. It was these memories, she realised thinking back on it that had perhaps lulled her into a false sense of security, her thoughts dwelling too much in the past than in the present.

  Certainly she had not expected him to have spoken as he had done at the conclusion of the interview, a cold edge to his voice and his face unbearably solemn, as if suddenly encased by a mask.

  ‘Now, I want you to promise me something, Miss Simpson,’ he had said.

  ‘Oh? And what is that?’ Immediately she had been on her guard, reluctant to promise him anything until she knew what it was that he asked of her.

  ‘I want you to promise me that you will go home now, the very moment this interview is finished. I don’t want you to harbour any notions that you will undertake an investigation of your own into this murder. I don’t want you to start asking all sorts of questions of goodness knows who. I don’t want – ’

  ‘You c
an’t possibility ask me to promise you all that,’ protested Rose.

  ‘I don’t see why not, Miss Simpson,’ said Inspector Deacon rather curtly. A frown had appeared on his forehead distorting his rather handsome features. It suddenly occurred to Rose that he had scowled at her rather a lot during the course of the interview. ‘It makes perfect sense that the investigation of a murder should be left to the police to carry out. It is our job to gather the evidence and to see that the guilty person is brought to justice. We are the experts in the matter and we can do without having to – ’

  ‘To do what exactly?’ demanded Rose. ‘Why, you sound just like Inspector Bramwell! You’ll be patting me on top of my head next and telling me to go off and be a good girl or some such thing equally frightful.’

  Rose heard a noise behind her which sounded very much like Sergeant Perkins desperately trying not to laugh. The thought of the sergeant doubled up with suppressed laughter brought a smile to her lips. She stole a glance at the inspector to determine his reaction to the turn of events. To his credit, she thought he was doing his upmost to conceal a smile himself. Certainly he coloured as she stared at him.

  ‘If I do sound like Inspector Bramwell, well, then all well and good. Perhaps, Miss Simpson, it is no bad thing,’ said Inspector Deacon. ‘I know that in the past I have been rather indulgent in allowing you to help us with our investigations, encouraged you even, but now it is quite different, don’t you see that?’

  ‘To be perfectly honest, no I don’t,’ said Rose.

  ‘Then I shall set it out for you very clearly. You have earned something of a reputation for being a bit of an amateur sleuth. I won’t say it isn’t justified, because of course it is. Your help has been invaluable to us in the past.’