Chaos at Carnegie Hall (A Fiona Figg & Kitty Lane Mystery) by Kelly Oliver

Author:Kelly Oliver [Oliver, Kelly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Boldwood Books
Published: 2022-11-14T16:00:00+00:00

14

THE FALL GUY

At breakfast the next morning, I tucked into the toast and tea with abandon. What I lacked in sleep, I planned to make up for in victuals.

As usual, Eliza picked at her fruit and nibbled on her toast. She chased one particular berry around her plate for at least thirty minutes.

“Good grief.” I put my cup down onto the saucer a bit too hard, and my tea sloshed over the sides of the cup. “Just eat the poor thing, don’t torture it. You’re as bad as a cat.”

“Poppy wouldn’t like you comparing me to a cat, Aunt Fiona.” Eliza smiled. “She absolutely loathes cats. They drive her to distraction.” She laughed. “My uncle has a cat, and Poppy terrorizes it something awful.”

Captain Blinker Hall had a cat? It was hard to imagine him living with another being, let alone one with fur and whiskers.

“Let’s concentrate on the matter at hand,” I said, pinching a piece of toast from Clifford’s plate while he was up getting another cup of coffee. “Who killed Hugo Schweitzer? We need to make a list of suspects.”

Eliza may not be a temporary special agent in British Intelligence, but she was sharp as a tack. And in any case, she already knew enough about Fredrick Fredricks and Hugo Schweitzer to join the investigation. I don’t think I could have stopped her if I had wanted to.

“Good Lord, you don’t think Fredricks did it?” Clifford joined us again with a fresh cup of coffee. “Not cricket to kill a man at point blank range. What’s sporting about that?”

I narrowed my brows. “Is there a sporting way to kill a man?”

“The gladiators—” Eliza said.

“Yes, well, Mr. Schweitzer was not a gladiator.” I cut her off before she could continue that line of argument. Although he was a German spy. And Fredricks was a renowned spy-killer, although usually he only killed those spies who’d turned and betrayed his Kaiser. Now Fredricks was caught with a smoking gun, maybe instead of worshiping the “great hunter,” Clifford would come around to believing he was no good. It was difficult to tell what Eliza thought of Fredricks. Judging from the way she joined the gushing suffragettes at the nick, she seemed to admire the man.

Judging from the letter in Schweitzer’s briefcase, and what Archie had told me about the phenol plot, the chemist had not turned. Far from it. He was in the middle of executing the great phenol plot on behalf of Kaiser Wilhelm himself.

Was it that plot that got him killed? Or was it his philandering with Miss Anna Case? They did have that row on board the Adriatic. Then again, maybe his wife decided she’d had enough of his making a fool of her in public. She certainly had a motive to kill the bounder.

I took a slip of paper and a pencil from my bag. I’d brought them from the room for this very purpose. In bold letters, I wrote SUSPECTS across the top.

Number one, Fredrick Fredricks. For some insane reason that I couldn’t fathom, I believed him when he said he was innocent.

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