The second clipping detailed how Bessie’s ex-husband, Tiberius Sarbah, had been arrested for the crime. The third announced that he had been released and charges dropped, due to insufficient evidence. A witness had retracted his original story that he had seen Tiberius commit the crime. The newspaper speculated that the witness, who was reportedly a minor, might have been one of the two now-orphaned children, Simon or Cecil, who were eleven and nine respectively.
All that was fascinating, but something else excited Dawson. “Do you see it, Eileen?” he said, turning to her in earnest. “Do you know what I’m thinking?”
“I believe I do, Inspector,” she replied, her eyes widening as she caught his fever. “You’re wondering if the butchery of Bessie and R.E. in 1952, and the massacre of Charles and Fiona in July of this year could be connected.”
“They’re too alike not to be,” Dawson said. “A husband and wife brutally murdered in both cases. It doesn’t matter that they are far apart in time.”
She smiled widely for the first time, showing several missing teeth. “You must be a divine gift, Inspector. I tried to make that case to Superintendent Hammond. He was not impressed-dismissed it at once.”
That’s the way it often was in Dawson’s line of business. What struck one detective as important could appear trivial, or at least coincidental, to another.
“The question is,” Dawson continued, “how could those two cases, so separate in time from one another, be related? Have you ever asked your father what he remembers about the events surrounding the murder?”
“Yes. Even before he became demented, he refused to talk about it and told me to put it out of my mind forever.”
“I see,” Dawson said, watching Eileen. He hadn’t quite known what to make of her in the first minutes of their meeting each other, but now he liked her. “What about Richard Sarbah?” he asked her. “You think he’ll talk to me?”
She seemed optimistic. “Between your charm and your authority, he might.”
“Charm?” He laughed. “Well, thank you. Where can I find Richard?”
Eileen gave Dawson a set of directions, which he wrote down in his notebook.
“Something else I was wondering,” he said. “How did the hyphenated surname ‘Smith-Aidoo’ come about?”
“Ah, okay,” Eileen said with a smile, “that part I can help you with. Bessie wanted my father and Uncle Cecil to have the distinctive name of Smith-Aidoo, rather than plain Aidoo, and to pass it onto successive generations. For every Smith-Aidoo, there are probably about a hundred Aidoos, so it does stand out. Or perhaps she wanted to show off her English ties or to render a lasting recognition of that part of her heritage. Another indication that she cherished the Aidoo part of her, but not the Sarbah.”
