Ginger Cat café

Ginger Cat café is a small seaside tearoom where Inspector Crome’s investigation into Elizabeth Barnard’s murder turns to the victim’s workplace and the ordinary timetable of her final evening. Its routine details—closing at eight, serving no dinners, and receiving its busiest trade before half past six—give the inquiry a concrete setting in which to test what staff knew and when they knew it.

Setting and Routine

Situated on the seafront, the café is presented as an unpretentious establishment organized around morning coffee, five varieties of tea, and a few limited lunch dishes. Small tables with orange-check cloths and uncomfortable basket-work chairs with orange cushions establish its modest, everyday character. The menu includes scrambled eggs and shrimps and macaroni au gratin; the emphasis is on light refreshments rather than evening dining.

The manageress takes the investigators into an untidy back room as the morning coffee service is beginning. That private space contrasts with the café’s public, service-oriented front: the police arrive amid the start of an ordinary working day, but their questions make the workplace part of a murder inquiry.

The Investigation at the Café

Crome asks the staff about the dead girl, how long she had worked there, and when she finished her shift. The manageress first insists that she knows nothing about Elizabeth, then describes her as a nice, clean-looking girl. When asked about the previous evening, she says Elizabeth went off duty at eight, the café’s closing time. Although customers sometimes came for tea and scrambled eggs after seven, the rush was usually over by half past six, and the café did not serve dinner.

These details define the limits of what the workplace can establish. The café supplies a closing time and a pattern of trade against which Elizabeth’s movements can be considered, but the manageress’s account does not itself explain how the young woman spent her evening after leaving work.

Staff and the Murdered Girl

Milly Higley, another employee, confirms that she knew Elizabeth, whom she calls Betty. Her response is markedly different from the manageress’s reserved description: she says she cannot believe the murder is real and recalls repeatedly pinching herself to make sure she was awake. The contrast places two forms of workplace testimony side by side—one guarded and factual, the other openly shaken—without turning either response into proof about the crime.

Through these interviews, the café is more than a backdrop. It is the point where Elizabeth’s identity as a murdered victim meets her former life as a worker among colleagues, and where ordinary routines become evidence for the reconstruction of her last known hours.