Page 66 of Murder on the Brighton Express
My words had no effect, and we left him in the office, the picture of misery.
As we ate haddock pies purchased from a cart at the market on our walk back to the station, we tried to untangle truth from lies. Harry and I both came to the same conclusion. Clement Beecroft and Geraldine Lacroix were in the thick of it. Almost every line of inquiry led back to them.
“McAllister admits he left his compartment to speak to Ruth,” I said. “So why didn’t Geraldine Lacroix notice him leave? Why did she lie about seeing Thomas Salter, yet not mention McAllister moving about?”
Harry agreed she was guilty of one lie, at the very least. “It’s time we have another chat to both her and Beecroft.”
The door toGeraldine Lacroix’s dressing room was slightly ajar, and her voice could be clearly heard through the gap. The accent was a cockney one, not cultured as it had been the first time we met her.
Harry and I glanced at one another, then I barged inside. He stayed in the corridor, in case she wasn’t decent. She was fully clothed, however, a dressmaker kneeling beside her, adjusting the hem of her gown. I called Harry in.
Geraldine’s spine stiffened. “How dare you enter without knocking!” Her accent was all plummy vowels and prim indignation. “Get out!”
I ignored her and began the interrogation with a question that I’d wanted to know the answer to ever since meeting her. “What is your real name?”
“I beg your pardon!”
“Where are you from?”
She tossed her head. “Fetch someone,” she ordered the dressmaker.
The dressmaker quickly tied the end of her thread and snipped off the excess. “I’ll get Mr. Beecroft.” She slammed the lid on her sewing kit closed and glared at me as she passed.
“He’s not here,” I told her. “We already checked.”
Harry closed the door behind her. “You were born within the sound of the Bow Bells, if I’m not mistaken.”
I’d heard about the cockney dialect only being spoken in the areas of London where residents could hear the bells of St Mary-le-Bow church in Cheapside. Outside of that five-mile radius, the accent was slightly different. As a non-Londoner, I couldn’t detect the nuances. I doubted most people could, and that’s why the word cockney had come to encompass the accent of the entire East End. But a true cockney speaker knew the difference.
Geraldine looked surprised that Harry identified her accent so precisely, but I wasn’t. He had lived in all sorts of areas and knew the slums equally as well as he knew Mayfair.
“I lied about my origins,” she finally admitted. “If that’s against the law now, the police will have to arrest almost everyone on the stage.”
“Including Beecroft,” I added. “We know his name is Clement Blaine and he was brought up in Bethnal Green. We know he’s married. We also know you and he both lied about seeing Thomas Salter moving about the first-class carriage the day Ruth Price died.”
Geraldine pressed a hand to her stomach and drew in a deep breath. She let it out slowly then lifted her gaze to Harry’s. She blinked long lashes at him. “If you can pick a Bethnal Green accent, then you too must have humble origins, Mr. Armitage. You understand why I lied, don’t you?”
“I understand the need to reinvent yourself.” Harry invited her to sit at her dressing table. “But lying to us only makes you look guilty. I don’t think you want anyone to accuse you of murdering Ruth Price.”
Her flirtatious blinks turned to startled ones. “I didn’t do it!”
“Did Ruth know about your past?” I asked.
She looked irritated that I’d resumed the interrogation, instead of Harry. “I don’t know.” She reached for his hand. “I never met that woman, and I certainly didn’t kill her. You must believe me, Mr. Armitage.”
Harry patted her hand before letting go. “Tell us why you claimed you saw Thomas Salter passing your compartment on that fateful trip.” At her blank look, he added, “The man with the flat nose sharing Beecroft’s compartment.”
“Clem told me to say it. He said if we don’t blame someone else, then you’ll blame us because that woman was spying on us in Brighton.”
“Did you see her watching you?”
“I didn’t. I assume Clem did.”
“Why blame Salter specifically?” Harry asked.
“Of all the passengers in that carriage, he looked likely.”
“You blamed him because he looked like a murderer?” I asked, incredulous.
