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D.I. Hobart tracked his wife’s retreat with the subtle gaze of a man used to hiding it, then suddenly sat forward. Her departure was his signal to begin talking about the only thing that mattered to him at that moment. The death of Mr. Plumtree.
“Did Harry tell you about the stool?” he asked.
“Father,” Harry chided. “Don’t you want to know how Cleo’s family is?”
“Yes, yes, of course, but your mother will be back in a moment and she won’t want to hear all the gruesome details of the case. Let’s get them out of the way first. So, the stool. It was too low. If Plumtree stood on it to hang himself, he would need to jump into the noose.”
“Then we can rule out hanging as the cause of death,” I said.
D.I. Hobart shook his head. “Itwasthe cause of death, but it wasn’t suicide. Hanging as a method for murder is not only incredibly rare, it’s also very difficult. There were no other marks on the victim, no evidence of a struggle, so he must have been incapacitated beforehand. Plumtree wasn’t a large man, but he still would have been heavy. A single murderer would have been strong, or there was more than one. A woman on her own, for example, couldn’t have done it.”
“Do we know how he was incapacitated?” I asked.
“He reeked of alcohol, so my former colleague told me. There were also two empty bottles of wine in the room and he had no companions that night, according to witnesses at the inn.”
“Inn? He didn’t die at home?”
“The Crown and Anchor, down by the Royal Docks. He’d rented a room for the night and ordered the bottles. The innkeeper took them up, but saw nobody with Plumtree, although he admits he didn’t go into the room.”
Why did a wealthy man with a London house take a room at a dockside inn?
Mrs. Hobart returned, carrying a tray. “Try these iced butter biscuits, Miss Fox. They were a favorite of a particular friend of Harry’s the other day when she joined us for afternoon tea.” She gave Harry a secret little smile, even though it was no secret who she was referring to.
I selected a biscuit and took a bite. “They’re delicious.”
“She ate two. I don’t know how she has such a slim figure.”
Harry shot his mother a glare but she didn’t seem to notice.
“It’s a mystery,” D.I. Hobart muttered absently.
I made sure to select a second biscuit when I finished my first and praise Mrs. Hobart again for their taste while she poured the tea.
“Speaking of mysteries,” D.I. Hobart went on, “some witnesses have said Plumtree was acting nervously in the days before his death. He was worried, kept looking over his shoulder, locking his door when he usually didn’t, that sort of thing.”
I accepted the teacup and saucer from Mrs. Hobart. “What triggered his nervousness?”
D.I. Hobart couldn’t answer that.
“It must have been premeditated,” Harry said. “It’s unlikely the murderer found a length of rope lying around the room. He must have brought it with him. Given the chosen method was hanging, the murderer clearly wanted the police to think Plumtree killed himself. But anyone who knew him would know he wasn’t remorseful over the loss of life resulting from the ship sinking.”
“So the murderer wasn’t close to him,” I went on, “but was close enough to know about the sinking.”
D.I. Hobart set down his teacup. “You’re jumping to conclusions without enough evidence.”
He was right, and I didn’t want to fall into that trap again.
“Tell me some facts about him,” I said. “I understand he married a much younger woman.”
“His widow is in her mid-twenties. They have a young son.”
“Does she inherit the business?” Mrs. Hobart asked, proving she was interested. The wife of a former Scotland Yard detective must be used to discussing cases with him, and this one was no exception. “That’s a strong motive for murder, particularly if he was unkind to her.”
“I don’t know, but I can find out.”
“It will only be half the business,” Harry pointed out. “His partner, Gooding, controls the other half.”
He said it with such assurance that I wondered if Mr. Gooding was part of Harry’s investigation for Mr. Massie. It was possible the man known as the Salt King used Gooding and Plumtree’s company to ship his salt around the world. Perhaps he had cargo on the ship that sank and employed Harry to find out why it sank and whether it could happen again.
