Mrs. Jeffries Appeals the Verdict by Emily Brightwell (black authors fiction .TXT) 📗

a surprise. We’d disagreed on a number of things. She thought I was too hard on the workers and I thought she was ridiculously easy. For goodness’

sakes, she gave them a morning and an afternoon break

plus a whole hour for lunch. It was ridiculous; she was coddling them like a bunch of babies. Every time I tried to instill some discipline amongst the workers, they’d go running to her and she’d overturn my decisions. That day, I’d finally had enough. When she sacked me I told her she was an unnatural woman and that if I’d had my way, the business could have doubled our profits for the year.”

“How long had you worked for Mrs. Muran?” Barnes

asked.

“Just a little over a year. Before that I worked at Anderson and Michaels in Leeds,” Sutter replied. “If I’d known how peculiar her business ideas were, I’d never have accepted the job. She was going to take all the capital on hand and use it for buying up row houses for the workers.

Can you believe it? I told her it was ridiculous, that she’d

never recoup that money, that it was like pouring sand

down a rat hole, but she insisted. I tried to get her to consider Addison’s offer, but she refused to even meet with the man.”

“What offer?” the inspector asked.

“John Addison, his family owns Addison’s Brass Works,

he was going to offer her a fortune for this company, but she

bluntly refused to even consider meeting the man. I tried to

talk sense into her, tell her to take the meeting and hear the

man out, but she wouldn’t. She kept saying she wasn’t interested in selling.”

“So you knew Addison?” the inspector asked. His lower

back began to ache from standing so long in one spot. He

shifted his weight a bit, hoping it would ease the pain.

“Yes,” Sutter admitted. “Addison had paid me twenty

pounds to arrange a meeting with her. He was going give

142

Emily Brightwell

me another twenty pounds when the meeting actually took

place.”

“Is that why she sacked you, because you disagreed

with her opinion?” Barnes stared hard at Sutter.

“Oh no, she sacked me because I stole money,” he replied

bluntly. “It wasn’t much, but I was angry, you see. When she

refused to meet with Addison, I lost twenty quid, so I took it

out of one of our suppliers’ cash accounts. Of course she

caught me, but I didn’t care. I knew I couldn’t stand working

for that woman any longer. I didn’t care if she sacked me. It

was a bit of a relief when it finally happened.”

Ruth Cannonberry arrived for their afternoon meeting just

as the others were sitting down. “I do hope I’m not late,”

she apologized as she slipped into her chair. “But I was unavoidably delayed. Honestly, some people simply haven’t any idea of when to stop talking and it’s dreadfully difficult

to tell the vicar that one simply can’t serve on another committee.”

“We’ve not really started,” Mrs. Jeffries assured her.

“The others have only arrived. Would you like to go first?”

“Only if no one else wishes to do so.” She smiled selfconsciously. “I’ve not much to report, but I did find out a little about Keith Muran’s first wife.”

“That’s quick,” Mrs. Goodge said, nodding in encouragement.

“Her Christian name was Emmaline, and she died of

pneumonia. She and Mr. Muran were married for eleven

years, and by all accounts it was a happy marriage. Less

than a year after her death, Keith Muran met Caroline Merriman and they married fairly soon after.”

“They didn’t wait until Mr. Muran was out of mourning?” Mrs. Goodge helped herself to a slice of seed cake.

“He was out of mourning, but only just,” Ruth replied.

“The first Mrs. Muran died in November and he married

Caroline December of the following year.”

Mrs. Jeffries Appeals the Verdict

143

“At least he waited a bit more than a year,” Mrs. Jeffries

muttered. “But we mustn’t jump to conclusions. Perhaps

the man was simply lonely. Some men are like that—they

don’t adjust well to living without a spouse.”

“Especially if they’ve been happily married,” the cook

added.

“That’s really all I managed to find out,” Ruth admitted.

“But I’ll keep on digging about and see what I can learn.”

“You’ve done very well.” Mrs. Jeffries looked around

the table. “Who’d like to go next?”

“As we’ve been talking about Mr. Muran’s first wife,”

Betsy said, “I’ll go next. I heard a bit that might be useful.”

She repeated what she’d found out from the lad at the grocers. “So after talking to him, I had to go along and see what I could find out from the greengrocer. I ran into a bit

of luck there—Bertie’s mum was a bit of a talker.” She

grinned. “Once the other customers had left, she couldn’t

wait to have a fresh ear. Apparently, Lucy Turner and Keith

Muran had been close for a number of years. Bertie’s mum

says she’s sure that Lucy Turner was Muran’s mistress.

Once Emmaline died, she fully expected Keith Muran to

marry her, but instead, he up and marries her cousin.”

“But if he was happily married, why’d he have a mistress?” Wiggins asked. He looked quickly around the table at their faces, wanting to make sure his blunt question

hadn’t offended any of the ladies present.

“We don’t know for certain he did,” Mrs. Jeffries said

slowy. “And even in happy marriages, in some circles, such

things happen.”

“That don’t seem very nice or very dignified.” Wiggins

made a disapproving face. He was quite a romantic at heart.

“Matters of the heart are often undignified,” the cook

said philosophically.

“So it would seem that Lucy Turner has been a part Keith

Muran’s life for a good number of years,” Mrs. Jeffries

said thoughtfully.

144

Emily Brightwell

“And she’s not about to stop,” Wiggins interjected. “Accordin’ to Charlotte, Lucy Turner and her mum have barged right in and taken over runnin’ the ’ouse.”

Betsy frowned at the footman.

“Oh, sorry, I’ll wait my turn.”

“Thank you,” she said tartly. “I also found out that Mrs.

Turner nursed Emmaline Muran during her illness. Bertie’s

mum told me that everyone in the neighborhood was surprised when she up and died. Apparently, she hadn’t been that ill, and no one, not even her doctor, had thought death

was that close.”

“But she died anyway,” Mrs. Jeffries said. “That’s very

interesting.”

“But not