The Missing Wife Read online

  The Missing Wife

  A Clara Fitzgerald Mystery

  Book 13

  By

  Evelyn James

  Red Raven Publications

  2018

  © Evelyn James 2018

  First published 2018

  Red Raven Publications

  The right of Evelyn James to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the permission in writing from the author

  Murder on the Mary Jane is the twelfth book in the Clara Fitzgerald series

  Other titles in the Series:

  Memories of the Dead

  Flight of Fancy

  Murder in Mink

  Carnival of Criminals

  Mistletoe and Murder

  The Poisoned Pen

  Grave Suspicions of Murder

  The Woman Died Thrice

  Murder and Mascara

  The Green Jade Dragon

  The Monster at the Window

  Murder on the Mary Jane

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter One

  Clara sat in her office. It was early March and a fire still burned in the hearth to take off the slight chill that crept into the room. Spring had arrived, but that did not mean they had dispensed with the cold weather just yet.

  Clara prided herself on being Brighton’s first female private detective, quite an achievement for a young woman, (Clara was only in her twenties) who had to confront male prejudice around every corner. What had begun with humble origins – locating lost pets or investigating stolen flower pots and garden ornaments – had bloomed into a thriving business that enabled Clara to live quite comfortably. That didn’t mean it was all peaches and cream, however. The more famous Clara had become and the greater her reputation for solving crimes the police could not, the more she found herself being asked to solve murders and other acts of violence. Tracking down lost cats might have been a little dull, but it rarely involved blood and gore, nor did it present a risk to Clara’s own wellbeing.

  Not that Clara resented her work; she actually rather enjoyed it, but she was fully aware of its disadvantages. As much as anything, Clara persisted in her line of work to help people. Some inner sense of duty made her agitated at the sight of an injustice.

  She was feeling agitated right at that moment as she listened to the tale being told by the good-looking young gentleman, in a dark grey suit, sitting before her desk. He was darkly handsome – brooding, some might say – he had very deeply set brown eyes that glimmered with all manner of secret emotions. He talked well, with a soft Irish accent. He had dressed smartly for his appointment with Clara, imagining he needed to make a good first impression to get her to take the case. Clara rarely turned anyone away, even those who she felt could not afford to pay her. She always moderated her bill in those instances.

  The gentleman’s name was Dylan Chase. He was a regular in the army and had worked his way up to captain during the last war. He continued to serve after the close of hostilities, explaining to Clara that his male family line were all military men, and someone had to stick around to make sure peace continued. He did not begrudge his career choice, even when it meant spending a great deal of time away from home and his wife.

  “We married in 1916,” he explained. “Elaine lived with her parents until the war was over, just in case. I have always been a realist and I wasn’t sure I would survive the war. I was one of the lucky ones. Nearly five years of conflict and not a scratch, except for the time I fell into a trench and bashed my knee. I sometimes found it unbelievable. Elaine always said I had a guardian angel looking over my shoulder.”

  Captain Chase paused.

  “In all that time, it never occurred to me that it might actually be Elaine who needed a guardian angel.”

  Captain Chase had been serving at Dublin Castle in Ireland. The British army had stationed men there due to the ‘troubles’ which had surfaced dangerously during the war. There were those in Ireland who desired for the country to be independent of the rest of Great Britain, self-governing and self-sustaining. However, there were also a lot of people who believed independence would be detrimental to the country and wanted to stay part of the Empire. The whole affair had been complicated by German involvement during the early part of the war. The Germans had tried to send guns to the Irish insurgents, hoping to stir up enough trouble to distract the British from the conflict in Europe. It had almost worked too and, throughout the war, British military units had had to be stationed in the country. A waste of manpower, but there was nothing else for it.

  Captain Chase considered himself Anglo-Irish; his mother had been English. He had no qualms fighting his own countrymen to keep Ireland part of Britain. If he felt fractionally betrayed at the government’s decision to allow Southern Ireland to become independent, while Northern Ireland remained part of the Empire, he did not make any hint of it. With the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, the British forces in Ireland were slowly being withdrawn. Captain Chase had finished his last tour of duty in Dublin and had returned home on leave, only to discover a new drama in his own front room.

  “Elaine had not written any letters for a while, or so it seemed,” Chase explained. “I wondered if it was just a case of the letters not reaching me, what with me being in the process of going from Dublin to Bristol. The letters might have been sent to Ireland first and would have to be forwarded to me. It has happened before. I was not perturbed. I wrote Elaine to let her know I would be home soon.

  “Since 1919, Elaine and I have lived in a little house on the coast. It is on the outskirts of town and I suppose you might call it remote. Elaine’s parents moved to Market Harborough last summer to be nearer to her sister, Julia. Julia lost her husband in the war and has three young children to raise. She also keeps an eye on her mother-in-law who has been very unwell since the death of her son. She lost her own husband to the flu epidemic.

  “Elaine and I have no children, not as yet, at least. Elaine’s parents thought it best to move nearer to their daughter Julia and assist her, as Elaine and I really don’t need any help from them.”

  Captain Chase came to a halt again. He seemed to become overwhelmed by emotion at points in his story and would have to stop for a while and regroup. Clara was certain that he was a man genuinely in grief, despite what the newspapers had muttered. She knew why Captain Chase was there, she had read about his story, and the speculation that went with it, in the local paper. She had determined, when he fi
rst made the appointment to speak to her, to listen to him with an open-mind and not to allow the nasty rumours in the papers to cloud her judgement.

  “Elaine sometimes becomes lonely,” Captain Chase managed to continue at last. “I encouraged her to become involved in local groups, to make friends. She did. I was certain she was a lot happier, a lot more content. Which made it a terrible shock to walk into my home and find it empty.

  “Sitting on the doormat were my last two letters, dated from the previous Friday and Sunday. They had never been opened, never been noticed as far as I could tell. There was no sign of anything sinister. Elaine’s clothes were in the wardrobe, her best hat and coat hung on the hall stand. Our old suitcase, the one I inherited from my parents and we used for holidays, was still under the bed. On the kitchen table was a half-written shopping list and the previous Friday’s newspaper was sitting beside it. Elaine had circled an advertisement for a fabric sale at the local department store. She had been thinking of making up some new curtains for the front room, she had written to me about it in a letter and asked if I was happy with her spending the money. I had written back to say she should go ahead.

  “At the kitchen sink, the dishes had been washed and were sitting on the draining board waiting to be dried and put away. Only they were all bone dry and had clearly been there for some time. The chickens in the back garden had been let out of their little house and never put away for the night. Sadly, a fox had killed most of them. The more I looked about our house, the more I saw signs that made me feel that Elaine had just popped out for a moment. Yet, for some reason, she had failed to return.”

  Captain Chase pinned Clara with his intense dark eyes. They glistened with emotion, as if at any point this stoic army man might breakdown and cry.

  “You must have seen what the newspapers have been saying about all this?” He queried.

  “I have,” Clara admitted.

  “I went to the police about an hour after I arrived home. It was the letters on the doormat that convinced me something was wrong. If Elaine had popped out that morning, why would the letters from Friday and Sunday still be sitting on the doormat? And the chickens, they made me stop and think. Elaine adored those birds. She would not have left them out for the night, to be picked off by a fox, unless she had been completely unable to get to them.

  “I told the police all this and they came to my home. They poked around and said there was no sign of any crime having been committed. Then they asked me if Elaine’s handbag was missing. I said I thought it was, along with her everyday coat and hat. They seemed to decide then and there that Elaine had merely walked out on me. There was no evidence of her being attacked and they didn’t believe me when I said our marriage was solid. Of course, it was not long after that, the newspapers picked up on the story.”

  Chase grimaced bleakly and Clara could understand why. The Brighton newspapers had not only picked up the story of his wife’s disappearance but had run away with it. They ran articles on Elaine Chase, discussing her last known movements and talking to those who knew her. At first, they merely supposed she had deserted her husband. A few spurious letters from ‘Elaine’ claiming she was in various parts of the country (and one even purporting she was in India) were sent to the media and reprinted. Adding to the speculation. Each of these ‘Elaines’ proved no more than someone with more time than sense on their hands. As the mystery deepened and no genuine sightings of Elaine could be discovered, the press began to turn its attention to a darker possibility. It was not long before the papers were printing speculative articles concerning the idea that Elaine had been murdered. The natural next step was to point an accusing finger at Captain Chase. Despite the fact Elaine had vanished while he was in Ireland, the rumour began to spread that Chase was a killer. People thought he had perhaps arrived in Brighton a day sooner than he claimed, had done away with his wife, and then made up the story about her disappearance.

  It was all beginning to verge on the precipice of slander; one woman even came forward and claimed to be Captain Chase’s long-term mistress. Until it was proved that the woman was actually a middle-aged housewife in Yorkshire, who could not identify Chase from a selection of pictures, the local gossip was that Chase had murdered his wife so he could marry this mistress.

  All of this Chase had endured with fortitude. He had not made a fuss, hoping that the attention to his case might at least reveal fresh information about where his wife was. The days had ticked by; no explanation for Elaine’s disappearance was forthcoming. Captain Chase had begun to give up hope, and then he had remembered an advertisement he had seen in the back of one of those newspapers that discreetly called him a murderer. It was an advertisement for Clara Fitzgerald, private detective.

  “The newspapers have labelled me a killer,” Chase said. “I do not even care about that. All I care about is finding Elaine. She did not desert me, and I certainly did not harm her. I am at the end of my tether with all this. The police seem to have lost interest. I fear I will never find her at this rate.”

  Captain Chase fumbled in his pocket and produced a letter. It had been folded and unfolded a number of times and was disintegrating at the creases. He held it tentatively out to Clara.

  “This is the last letter Elaine sent me. There is a subtle reference to being uneasy about something. I thought maybe it was important?”

  Clara took the letter and read it. Largely it contained mundane news that was only of interest to the recipient, however, just at the bottom, before a paragraph on cleaning the range, Elaine had written a cryptic few sentences.

  All is going well at rehearsals, but I have this strange feeling, so hard to describe it. Foreboding sounds too dramatic, and yet it is rather like that. Maybe it is because we are working on the Scottish Play and everyone is talking superstitious rot, but I keep feeling that something might happen. Something bad. But, you know how I talk such nonsense sometimes! I should not have even written that, it is probably pre-performance nerves. I hope you will be back for the first night. I am very excited.

  “Elaine had joined an amateur dramatics group to make new friends. They are performing Macbeth and Elaine will play Lady Macbeth. If she comes back…” Chase drifted away for a moment, his mind elsewhere. Then he glanced back. “It is Elaine’s first big part. She was nervous and I put down her talk of foreboding to that. But what if it was something else? This letter is the only tangible clue I have to what happened to my wife, and even then it is really nothing at all. The police are not interested.”

  “The police have a lot of cases on their plate and limited manpower,” Clara said, feeling the need to defend them. “They have a tendency to put cases that look challenging to solve to one side rapidly.”

  “I am convinced my wife is alive,” Chase added. “And I think she is in trouble. She was last seen at a rehearsal for the play. She said she was going to buy some bread before walking home. Something happened to her during that time.”

  Captain Chase hesitated.

  “I can understand if you do not care to take on this case. The police have already explained to me that there is nothing to work with, no clues, no motive, nothing. If you feel the same…” Chase tailed off.

  “Captain Chase,” Clara said gently. “I am not the police. I have a great respect for those who bring law and order to our country, but I am aware of their shortcomings. I shall investigate this matter for you, but I cannot promise anything. Your wife may be dead, I have to make plain this possibility. But I will do all in my power to provide you with an answer.”

  “Thank you, Miss Fitzgerald,” Captain Chase sighed. “I know my wife is alive, and I know you will find her!”

  Clara said no more. She did not make hopeless promises.

  Chapter Two

  Annie came to know the Fitzgeralds during the war. She had been in the hospital where Clara was serving as a volunteer nurse. Annie had lost her family when a zeppelin dropped incendiary bombs on their home. She had never known such devastatio
n; the emotional trauma had nearly been the end for her. A chance friendship with Clara had led to new things, a lucky circumstance for them both. Clara’s brother Tommy had been due to come home from the front. He had been severely injured and was crippled, at least temporarily. Clara needed help looking after him and it had been agreed that Annie would join the Fitzgeralds as a nurse for Tommy.

  Before long Annie realised that Clara needed more than just a nurse for her brother. Clara was an intelligent and resourceful woman, but a hopeless cook and even worse at organising the mundane running of a household – such as getting the washing done and making sure the rugs were beaten. Annie, who admitted to herself freely that she liked a home spick and span, could not resist slowly taking over each task Clara was clearly struggling with. Eventually Annie had slipped into the role of housekeeper with no one really noticing. She cooked, she cleaned and, above all, she kept an eye on the Fitzgerald siblings who seemed (to her at least) hopelessly prone to getting themselves into trouble.

  The years had merged. Annie loved the house and enjoyed her role within it. With all the talk of women’s independence and taking over men’s work, Annie sometimes felt she was old-fashioned for liking a spot of housework, but she could not help herself. There was something intrinsically satisfying about the sunshine glowing through a newly cleaned window, or a freshly blackened fire grate that looked as good as new. She would rather be cleaning than doing Clara’s work, anyway. She could see nothing pleasurable or satisfying in tracking down thieves and murderers. In fact, she thought it rather grim and was rather disapproving of Clara’s career choice. Not least because it often meant Clara was late for dinner.

  Annie considered herself a very fine cook. She could whip up a steak and kidney suet pudding that would make a man’s eyes water. There was a power in that pudding. Annie could have cooked for bigger households, wealthier ones where her work would be similarly rewarded, but she would not leave Clara and Tommy. One of the things that made her happiest was ensuring they were well fed. Clara sometimes griped that she was getting too stocky and would have to cut back; Annie ignored her. A woman shouldn’t be too skinny, in Annie’s opinion, it was unhealthy.