Murder Is Come Again by Joan Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

Albemarle. Probably just wanted him to think well of her, poor soul. She wouldn’t be a woman to squander money on her own comfort when she had two kiddies to raise on an officer’s half pay. Just because some tavern keeper mean-mouthed her didn’t mean he was right. Even if she happened to live in Brighton that didn’t mean the rest of her story was false.
    The unsavoury Lanes district was known by Coffen. He was glad he wasn’t driving his curricle for street urchins to wreck, or for horse thieves to make off with his gray prads. He wanted to hear what Black had learned and returned to the hotel to await him. His heart afire with good intentions, he decided to take Mary some more money so she could really stay at the Albemarle. As he headed to the front door, his pockets jingling, he met Black coming in.
    “I found her,” Coffen announced. “Got her address and a map right here. She had the clerk forward my note to her. Couldn’t afford the Albemarle, poor girl.”
    “If she’s a local lass, she didn’t have to stay at a hotel, Mr. Pattle,” Black pointed out, but didn’t press the matter. “I may be on to something as well.” He reported his story.
    “You see, I told you Mary had nothing to do with it,” Coffen crowed. “It was Flora and her boyfriend that searched the house.”
    “It looks that way, but the important point, Mr. Pattle, is that there is something valuable in the house, and they didn’t find it last night, for Flora all but asked me if we’d found it.”
    “Good work, Black. We’ll think about that later. Now I’ve got to find Mary.”
    “I’ll go with you.”
    Coffen was in two minds about this. He wanted to be alone with Mary, but there was no denying something was amiss. The clerk had definitely told him Mary picked up his note herself the first time, then admitted he’d forwarded it to her. Why would he have lied about it if she hadn’t asked him to? In other words, she wanted to keep her address from him. Her wanting that walk on the beach late at night was odd too. It was damp and chilly there, yet she’d let on to enjoy it, even when he suggested a couple of times that they go for a late night snack. And she was an excellent trencherman.
    She’d asked him more than once what time it was, almost as if she had some other appointment to keep. What if she was mixed up with some undesirables? Not that she’d be helping them willingly, but it was just possible they were forcing her against her will. P’raps they’d got hold of Tommy and were threatening to do him some harm.
    If it had been anyone but a pretty woman who made a great fuss over him he would have realized in an instant that this was foolishness, but he wanted Mary to be what he thought she was, and so he made himself believe her innocent, even if she had told him a few harmless fibs. And if a gang of roughians had her, then Black was not only welcome but necessary.
    “Let’s go,” he said. “Best hire a hackney. We’d have trouble finding the place in the Lanes.”
    The hackney delivered them to a large, tumbledown rooming house next door to a fish market. The whole street reeked from the decaying remains of fish. Flies and cats and ragged children were everywhere.
    “This isn’t the sort of place a decent woman would live, Mr. Pattle.”
    “She likely just hired a room for the night. Someone might have put her on to it,” Coffen said, with more hope than belief, as he ducked a flying fish head one of the urchins pelted at him.
    The blowzy looking woman who answered the door reminded Coffen of that awful woman in a play Prance took him to. Beggars Opera, it was called. Thieved Opera would have been a better name for it. Her hair was falling down from under a dirty mobcap, her slatternly body bulging under a filthy apron.
    She removed a pipe from between her brown teeth with surprisingly dainty though dirty hands and hollered, “What do you want?”
    “I’m looking for Mrs. Filmore. I heard she had a