Trouble at High Tide (22 page)

Oh, George,
I thought.
It’s not your fault some reporter starved for news would twist our meeting into something ugly.

Adam was in the kitchen with Norlene when I went up to the main house. The cook gave me a sympathetic look. Adam’s expression was unreadable.

“Adam, I need to get to headquarters for a meeting,” I said. “Is there any chance you can give me a lift?”

“I’m busy right now,” he said, looking down at a catalogue that was open on the counter. He turned a page.

“Can you call a taxi for me, then?”

“I can try, but I doubt they’d be able to get through all the reporters out front. Take a look.” He cocked his head at the window that overlooked the front of the property.

I went to the window and carefully lifted the curtain. All the press that had deserted the Bettertons’ house the day before were back again, and more, including the television truck with its satellite pole.

“Norlene, do you have the Jamisons’ number?” I asked.

“I’ll call them for you,” she said. “You go over there by the beach and I’ll have a taxi waiting for you in front of their house.”

“Thank you so much,” I said, giving her a fast hug.

I left the kitchen without saying goodbye to Adam, who refused to look at me again as he continued turning the pages of his catalogue. He must have been reflecting the family’s annoyance with me, and I couldn’t blame him—or them—yet the situation had not been created by me but by a reporter stretching the truth beyond recognition. Nevertheless, it was the second time the family’s problems had been complicated by my presence, both times via a photograph of me in their local newspaper. I wondered how long it would be before Tom withdrew his offer of hospitality and asked me to leave. And when he did, what would I do?

W
hatever members of the press weren’t loitering in front of Tom’s house were milling about headquarters when I arrived. Sunglasses firmly in place, I walked swiftly through the crowd, hoping to reach the duty desk before I was recognized.

“Hello, Mrs. Fletcher.” It was Larry Terhaar, the reporter from the Associated Press. He’d spoken my name softly, perhaps in hopes of keeping me to himself before the other reporters got wind of my presence. But the moment he turned my way, his colleagues pursued me as well.

“Who’s that?”

“Is that the writer?”

“Mrs. Fletcher, just a minute.”

“Did you come to Bermuda to have a tryst with your lover from Scotland Yard?”

“What do you have to say for yourself?”

My face was flaming by the time an officer in the front room of headquarters grabbed me by the elbow and used his
ID card to open the door to the corridor inside. “I don’t know who you are,” he said, chuckling, “but if those hounds are after you, you need our protection.”

“Thank you so much, Constable—?”

“Andrews,” he replied.

I brushed imaginary dust off my skirt and tugged at the hem of my jacket. “I’ll have a lot more sympathy from now on for those pursued by the press,” I said, forcing a laugh.

“As I tell my wife, everyone’s got a job to do, not all of them with clean hands and shiny shoes. Now, who are you looking for?”

I debated asking to see the Scotland Yard team first, but decided to address the commissioner directly, hoping to head off any misplaced anger at George.

“I’d like to see Commissioner Hanover,” I said.

“Do you have an appointment?”

“He’s not expecting me, but I believe he’ll be willing to see me.”

“Write your name and direction on this page,” he said, giving me a notebook.

I did as instructed.

“I’ll have to call his office. You wait here. Don’t go anywhere else, or I’ll be in a lot of trouble for letting you fend for yourself.”

“I promise I won’t move,” I said.

Constable Andrews trotted down the hall and turned the corner.

I leaned against the wall, listening to the shouts and arguments outside in the front hall, and caught my breath for the first time since I exited the taxi.
How can I make this
right?
I wondered.
Was I even wise to come here?
I asked myself. George might be upset to find me defending him when he’d done nothing wrong. And he hadn’t. Neither had I. But we both knew that the appearance of wrongdoing was every bit as damaging as the actual act. How did we end up in this thorny situation?

Constable Andrews returned, waving a paper name tag at me. “Here, wear this,” he said, handing me the badge, which I stuck on my jacket. I followed him to the stairs and climbed to the second floor, passing the large room where the press conference had taken place. “The commissioner is in a briefing room right now, but he said you could come up.”

The constable opened the door to a small conference room where three men sat around the table with Hanover. It was obvious to me, judging by their dress uniforms, that they were all senior management in the police service.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Fletcher,” Commissioner Hanover said, rising. “Come in. These men are part of the team working on the cases.” He didn’t need to specify that the cases were the Jack the Ripper murders. He introduced me to Superintendent Jonathan Bird, Deputy Commissioner Allan Mumford, and Chief Inspector A. M. Tedeschi. “Is there something that we can do for you?” he asked, holding out the chair next to him.

I had been hoping to speak with the commissioner privately, but it seemed he was not going to allow that to happen. I took the seat and composed myself.

“I appreciate you gentlemen seeing me on such short notice,” I began.

“On no notice at all, you mean,” Hanover said. “One caveat for our courtesy, Mrs. Fletcher. What gets said in this room stays in this room. Understood?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Please proceed.”

“I asked to see you, Commissioner Hanover,” I said, “in hopes I could set the record straight before this story—and that’s what it is, just a made-up story—before this story gets blown so far out of proportion that the real focus of the investigation gets lost.”

Hanover sat back in his chair and smiled. “You’re referring to the headline and picture in today’s newspaper, I presume.”

“Yes! It’s terribly embarrassing but completely without merit. Chief Inspector Sutherland and I are old friends, it’s true, but we were not ‘cuddling’ on the beach. In fact, I had brought him down to show him where I had found the body, and we had been discussing the investigation.”

“Didn’t you see the photographer?” Deputy Commissioner Mumford asked. He was a large white man with a bushy mustache and black hair combed straight back.

“I did notice the boat passing by us several times,” I replied, “but unfortunately, at the time I didn’t realize what those on board intended.”

Superintendent Bird laughed. “Sneaky curs, aren’t they?” he said to his colleagues. He removed his glasses and polished them with the hem of his white shirt.

“We’re sorry you had to go through this, Mrs. Fletcher, but there really isn’t anything we can do for you,” Commissioner Hanover said.

“You could voice your support for Scotland Yard, and specifically for Chief Inspector Sutherland, who doesn’t deserve the drubbing he’s taking in the press.”

“I’m sure the Chief Inspector can fend for himself,” Mumford said. “He’s hardly a novice at dealing with the media.”

Chief Inspector Tedeschi raised his hand. “‘You lie in your throat if you say I am any other than an honest man,’” he said.
“Henry the Fourth, Part Two.”

His colleagues groaned.

The officers seemed to be in a relaxed and cheerful mood. They certainly didn’t appear to be upset with me, nor with George. If anything, they were sympathetic. It occurred to me that by drawing the focus of the press to George and me, we had taken pressure off the police department. So long as the reporters had something they considered scandalous to pursue, no matter how false the accusation, attention was taken away from those on the Bermuda Police Service, who continued to work on the investigation.

“I’m sorry for interrupting your meeting,” I said. “I thought you were angry with us about the article, although we had no control over how the newspaper portrayed us.”

“We’re not angry with either of you,” the commissioner said. “We wish the Yard would make more progress in helping to solve these cases, but our expectations are not high, given London’s lack of familiarity with the island.”

“Not to mention its utter failure in prior cases,” Superintendent Bird put in. He made no effort to suppress a smile.

“We fully expect that the Bermuda Police Service will
find the perpetrator or perpetrators, as we have in the past,” Hanover said to me.

“Then why bother to call in Scotland Yard at all?” I asked.

Hanover looked around the table as if seeking the answer.

“Frankly, it was a public relations move,” Deputy Commissioner Mumford said.

The others nodded.

“The government was getting a lot of pressure from the hospitality industry. They worried about losing business, that the tourists would cancel reservations. They wanted to see progress. We gave them Scotland Yard,” he said.

“Not our fault if the Yard are no more successful than our boys,” Superintendent Bird added. “Gives us a bit of wiggle room to run our investigation with less pressure.”

“Of course, if you tell the press we said this, we’ll deny it,” Chief Inspector Tedeschi added.

“I have no intention of speaking to the press on any matter,” I said. “My intuition tells me a denial will only inflame them more.”

“Very wise, Mrs. Fletcher,” Tedeschi said. “They’ll only see it as ‘the lady doth protest too much.’”

“Are you quoting Shakespeare again, Tony?” Superintendent Bird said.

“
Hamlet
, act three, scene two,” he replied. “Comes in handy.”

“Thank you for your time, gentlemen,” I said. “I appreciate your seeing me.” I started to rise, but the commissioner put a hand out to delay me.

“Before you go, Mrs. Fletcher, do you have information
on the Betterton murder that you can share with us? Like who the killer might be?”

He released my arm and I sat down again.

“We are not unaware of your reputation, you know,” he continued. “The police are always happy to have more information.”

“The only new information I’ve uncovered,” I said, “is that the shoes found at the top of the stairs on the Jamison property belong to Claudia Betterton.”

“Isn’t that just like a woman to concentrate on the shoes,” Bird said, smirking.

“We were hoping for information more in line with identifying the person behind the crime,” Hanover added.

“I can’t deny I’ve been talking to people and trying to figure out why Alicia was killed and who her murderer might be, but I wouldn’t say I’m ready to accuse anyone.”

The commissioner rose from his seat and I stood as well. “You be sure to let us know when you can pinpoint the culprit,” he said. He winked at his fellow officers as he escorted me to the door.

Perhaps he thought I hadn’t seen his expression, or maybe he didn’t care that I had. As he closed the door behind me, I heard Tedeschi say, “All’s well that ends well.” The men laughed.

Constable Andrews was waiting for me in the hall. “Get what you need?” he asked.

“Not exactly,” I replied. “Would you mind if I stopped in to see the Scotland Yard team before I leave?”

“Have a go,” he said. “Know where their office is?”

“I know where I met with them before.”

“Let’s see if they’re still there,” he said. “If not, I can sneak you out the back door where you’re less likely to be accosted by those fellows out front.”

We descended the stairs to the first floor and I walked ahead of him to the room where I’d been interviewed by Inspectors Macdonald and Gilliam. It was empty.

“Do you mind if I wait a little while in case any of them return?” I asked Andrews.

“I don’t mind, as long as you don’t wander about.” He looked at his watch. “They may be out for lunch. I’ll give you fifteen, twenty minutes before I come to collect you. Is that enough?”

“I hope so,” I said.

Andrews left and I grabbed a chair, arranging it so that I could look out into the hall, but wouldn’t be immediately seen unless someone came into the room. I dug in my shoulder bag for something to read—I am never without some kind of reading material—and found Alicia’s book on Jack the Ripper. I started from the beginning again, reviewing the information on the “canonical five” Freddie had told me about, looking for Alicia’s highlights and underlines. There were six more victims who’d been killed either by the Ripper himself or someone imitating his style. There was a footnote at the end of the sentence that discussed the eleven victims, and I turned to the back of the book to find the reference. Alicia had put a little star by it.

“A
h, Mrs. Fletcher. How wonderful to see you,” Freddie said, coming into the room lugging his battered suitcase in one hand and juggling a pile of letters and a package in the other. “I was afraid we’d lost your assistance.” He parked his suitcase under a table, put his mail down on top of it, and said, “I heard your voice just now. Who are you saying never existed?”

I looked up at him. “Fairy Fay.”

“Quite right,” he said, stroking his red sideburns. “She was a figment of the press’s imagination. Possibly they meant Emma Elizabeth Smith, who was attacked the prior Christmas in 1886, but she lived. Why does she interest you?”

I opened the back cover of Alicia’s book and showed Freddie the note in her handwriting. “I took it to mean Alicia had an appointment with this Fairy Fay. I went to Gardner’s Deli in Hamilton yesterday at two o’clock looking for her. No wonder no one knew the name.”