Free 01 - Memories of the Dead by Evelyn James

received from the envelope in his hands. They were all blank.
    “Mr Greengage, I presume?”
    “No, no.” Clara took a piece
of paper and stared at it, “He had no reason to. How would he know I would ask
for the riddles? He had no time to prepare a dummy envelope and anyway what did
he have to gain apart from the continued harassment of Mrs Wilton?”
    Tommy had no answer.
    “They are just riddles.” Clara
turned the paper over and over in the lamplight as if to try and reveal some
secret, “If Mrs Greengage did not have any more of them why didn’t he just say so?”
    “Perhaps he didn’t know. He
thought his wife had written the rest but actually she hadn’t.”
    “That makes no sense either.”
Clara looked at the papers forlornly, “I don’t understand any of this.”
    Tommy was prevented from
replying by a knock on the parlour door.
    “Begging pardon,” Annie
appeared, “But there is a police inspector at the door says he must speak to
you.”
    “Park-Coombs.” Clara looked
meaningfully at Tommy, but he just appeared puzzled, “Send him in Annie.”
    The inspector seemed slightly
more frazzled than he had that morning as he entered the room. Clara wondered
if his enquiries were proving less fruitful than he had imagined.
    “Miss Fitzgerald. Mr
Fitzgerald.”
    “Inspector Park-Coombs, this
is my brother Tommy.” Clara introduced them, “Tommy, the inspector thinks I am
a cold-blooded murderer.”
    “Hazard of the job, miss.” The
inspector grimaced.
    “Well, I think I can put your
mind at rest inspector, at least where Clara is concerned.” Tommy announced,
enjoying the moment of triumph, “You see, my service pistol is completely
inoperable.”
    “I see.” The inspector said
mildly.
    “I’ll fetch it if you like.”
Tommy started to push his wheelchair away from the table, but the inspector
stopped him.
    “I’ll retrieve it, if you
don’t mind sir. Case of ensuring the evidence isn’t tampered with. I’m sure you
understand.”
    “I’ve been here all day, if I
was going to break my own gun I would have done it by now.”
    “Indeed sir, but even so…”
    Tommy waved away the rest of
the words.
    “All right inspector, but I
assure you I didn’t fill the thing with mud from Flanders in the last half hour
just to get my sister off the hook.”
    “Could you direct me to it?”
    “My bedroom is down the
hallway, last room on the right. Used to be the garden room. You’ll find the
pistol in the dresser, second drawer down under some vests. Annie could show
you.”
    “No need.” The inspector let
himself out of the room and vanished.
    Clara and Tommy sat in silence
for a while and then she looked at her brother.
    “Is it odd that though I feel
relieved for myself I feel angry for Mrs Wilton?”
    “Not at all.” Tommy told her,
“Quite natural.”
    “I wish I could help her more
but I feel at a complete loss. I am out of my depth.”
    “Don’t give in old thing, not
now.”
    Clara sighed and dumped the
blank riddle papers into the fireplace.
    “Could this be about Mrs
Greengage defrauding Mrs Wilton?” She pondered.
    “If that was truly the case
would she hire you?”
    “I have to face the
possibility that she may have considered my skills too inadequate to find the
truth, thus she felt safe asking me to look into the crime, knowing that by
doing so she would make it seem like she had nothing to hide.”
    “You are being too hard on
yourself.” Tommy said sternly, “Besides, we have not even begun to consider the
parrot.”
    Clara took a moment to register
what he had said.
    “The parrot?”
    “Mrs Greengage’s white
cockatiel who popped his clogs the night of the séance.”
    “Augustus?”
    “Yes, I’ve been looking up
talking birds in father’s old encyclopaedias.” Tommy pulled a large, heavy book
towards him.
    “I thought poor Augustus died
of a heart attack?” Clara said, still trying to catch up.
    “He might have done, but Mrs
Greengage was quite