Mrs. Jeffries in the Nick of Time by Emily Brightwell Page A

have had to have been fired at much closer range than the distance from the French door to Humphreys’ desk.”
    “So our killer knew how to shoot,” Smythe murmured. “That should narrow the field just a bit. Very few people are that good with guns, especially revolvers and pistols. It takes a lot of practice to hit a target, even with a rifle.” He knew from his days in Australia that simply pointing and pulling a trigger didn’t mean you’d hit anything. In the bush, a body could starve to death trying to find his dinner with a shotgun; he’d almost done it a time or two.
    “Agreed and that brings me to my point: One of our main tasks should be to find out which of Francis Humphreys’ enemies is a good shot. As Smythe has rightly pointed out, it’s not a skill that’s particularly common.”
    “But it is common among the upper class,” Betsy said earnestly. “Johnny Cooper, that lad that Wiggins met in the pub, mentioned that he accompanied Francis Humphreys to Scotland so that Humphreys could hunt.”
    “That’s true, but he also said that Humphreys wasn’t very good with either a rifle or his Enfield,” Wiggins added.
    “I’m aware of that,” Betsy argued. “But my point is, if Humphreys went to Scotland regularly, even if it was just to drink good whisky, there’s a likely chance other members of his household and most of his friends hunted as well. One of them might have been a pretty fair shot. So even though shooting isn’t a skill most of us have, I’ll bet there’s plenty among both Humphreys’ family and friends that know how to make a bullet hit the mark.”
    “True,” Mrs. Jeffries mused. “So we can’t assume that someone among his circle is the killer simply because they’re a good shot. But knowing which of his enemies could shoot decently would be a help.”
    “It’d be more of a help if we could find one of his enemies that wasn’t sittin’ in the drawin’ room when he was murdered,” Mrs. Goodge muttered. “From what I heard today, the people most likely to have wanted the man dead were his nieces and nephews.”
    “What did you hear?” Mrs. Jeffries asked.
    The cook shrugged. “Not much, really. But my source did say that Francis Humphreys was generous to his relations, but he didn’t let them forget who controlled the money. He made them step lively and dance to his tune. I know it’s not much, but I’ve got more sources comin’ ’round tomorrow and hopefully, I’ll hear a bit more about the other family members.”
    “I’ll go next if it’s all the same to everyone,” Luty volunteered. She paused for a moment and then plunged straight ahead. “I found out a little about Humphreys’ finances. According to my sources, he has a lot of money, most of which he inherited from his wife.”
    “He had none of his own?” Mrs. Jeffries asked.
    “Some, but not near as much as she had.” Luty grinned. “When she died, she left him everything, but only on the condition that when he died, half of the estate went to his family and half went to her nephew, Michael Collier.”
    “So Collier gets half of everything and Humphreys’ nieces and nephews have to split the other half?” Mrs. Goodge frowned. “Hmm, that’d not make for comfortable family gatherings. I wonder if Humphreys’ relatives knew about the terms of the will?”
    “But Humphreys had gone to see his solicitor right before he was murdered,” Wiggins reminded them. “Maybe he was changin’ it all. Maybe Michael Collier wasn’t gettin’ as much as he thought. That’d be a good motive for murder.”
    “Collier was sittin’ in the drawin’ room when the murder was done,” Mrs. Goodge said. “So he couldn’t be the killer.”
    “But he could ’ave hired it done,” Smythe suggested. “Seems to me we’ve already decided not to let the relatives out of the running just because they were ’avin’ tea when Humphreys was shot. Any of them could ’ave hired someone to murder their