Chapter Eleven
S olomon arrived in London feeling as if every bone in his body had been well rattled. Still, he rather enjoyed the exhilaration of speed and found himself unwilling to face the frustration of a hackney inching its way through the traffic between London Bridge Station and Dunne’s offices in the city. He walked.
Dunne and Sons was a respected firm of solicitors, with a special department for private inquiries, which was managed by the eldest son of the founder. Another son was a senior partner in the firm, yet another a barrister. But it was the eldest son Solomon asked for, and within ten minutes he found himself in that gentleman’s private office, drinking a very decent cup of tea and munching on a spicy biscuit.
“So, what can I do for you today?” Mr. Dunne inquired.
Solomon swallowed the last of his biscuit and fished out the purloined letter signed by Dunne’s underling.
The lawyer read it, his eyebrows flying up. “Might I ask how this came into your possession?”
“It was discovered among the effects of a lady recently deceased.”
“Miss Niall, in effect,” Dunne guessed. His eyes were still not friendly, although he remained polite. “May I know what your interest in the matter is?”
“I am trying to help a friend who has been accused of involvement in Miss Niall’s death. What I would like to know is why one of your employees is sending private information to Miss Niall.”
A hint of confusion flickered in Dunne’s eyes and was veiled. “Because she asked for it, of course.”
“For such specific and delicate information concerning someone else?” Solomon retorted, not troubling to hide his disappointment.
Dunne frowned. “I’m afraid I don’t understand you.”
The truth dawned on Solomon. “She pretended the child you traced was hers!”
“Mr. Grey, though it is no business of yours, and I tell you only to preserve the integrity of my firm, the child was hers. There is no doubt about that.”
*
Reluctant to face either Colonel Niall or his son, Constance took the easier route and knocked on the kitchen door.
“Bless you, ma’am, what you coming in this way for?” demanded the flustered kitchen maid, opening the door wide to let her in.
“Oh, I didn’t want to disturb the family,” Constance said. “Would you please ask Mr. Worcester if he could spare me a few minutes of his time?”
While the girl scuttled off, Constance caught the resentful stares of the other servants. They didn’t like their own space being invaded, especially with no notice, and not even by family, but by a friend of a friend of the family. If the Maules were still accounted friends. Had Frances really wanted to cause this much damage? Or had she just not cared very much?
The maid came back and took Constance to the butler’s pantry.
Constance waited until the door closed and the girl’s footsteps faded back across the kitchen floor. The butler stood impassively before her, waiting to learn her business.
“I’m sorry to disturb you again, Worcester, but I’m afraid I have to. And I have to speak of things that I’m sure will cause you pain.”
“ You may have to, ma’am,” he said firmly. “ I do not.”
Uh-oh . “Then I hope you will choose to,” she said steadily. “Because the more I learn of Miss Frances, the more I think she was not only a dangerous person, but putting herself in danger, too. She found unique ways of manipulating people, did she not? Of getting them to do her bidding.”
He inclined his head but said nothing. Nor did he invite her to sit, and somehow, in his private space, she didn’t quite like to without invitation.
“May I know,” she said as delicately as she could, “what hold she had over you?”
“What makes you think she had any?”
“The fact that she no longer troubled to sneak out of the house. She knew you would see her. I daresay you opened the front door for her on many occasions. And yet you never told the colonel.”
“I couldn’t. It would have broken his heart all over again.”
“He might have stopped her.” She didn’t want to say the rest. She might not have died .
But it seemed he had already thought of that, for he closed his eyes in clear pain. “Don’t, ma’am. I know what I’ve done, and I doubt the colonel can bear much more.”
“Did she threaten you with some discredit?”
“Not me so much as my father. He got into trouble once, when he was young. He’s been a good man ever since, but she threatened to have him arrested again, and I don’t doubt she would and could have done so.”
“If you hadn’t kept quiet about her little expeditions?”
He nodded miserably.
“Worcester, this is the heart of the matter. To discover who hurt her, I need to know where she went, whom she was seeing.”
“She never told me that,” he said. “It would have given me something to hold over her and get myself free.”
Damn her, Frances had been good at the dreadful games she played. “Then you have no idea? Not even a guess by how long she was gone at a time?”
“Sometimes she went out in the afternoon and didn’t come home until morning. Other times, she was gone a bare half-hour. There was no consistency in her movements.”
“Did you see what direction she took?” Constance asked without much hope.
“Different directions.”
“But she didn’t ride, did she?”
“No, she usually walked.”
“I don’t suppose you ever intercepted notes addressed to her? Or from her to someone else?”
“No.” He didn’t say that Bingham had been responsible for ferrying them, though he probably knew. In his own way, he was trying to protect the girl. It seemed they all needed protecting in this house. Even Frances, who must have gone too far in the end for someone…
“ All over again, ” Constance said suddenly, staring at the butler.
“I beg your pardon, madam?”
“You said, It would have broken his heart all over again . When was the colonel’s heart broken by her the first time?”
“When she died, of course.”
“Oh no,” Constance insisted. “You were talking about before she died. Worcester, we need the truth before we can end all of this.”
Without permission, Worcester sank onto the chair by his desk, as if his legs would no longer bear his weight.
“It’s not my place to say. Family secrets should remain in the family.”
“Not if an innocent woman is hanged to keep them. Not even if only her reputation is spoiled, which would be to the severe detriment of herself, her husband, and her children.”
The poor man looked even more miserable. Constance felt unspeakably sorry for him. After all, he was still trying to do the right thing. Frances had left him very little room to do so.
Something seemed to shift in her head, and a piece of the puzzle fell into place.
She could have saved Solomon a journey if only her brain moved faster.
“I believe I can guess,” she said slowly. “All you need to do is nod. I should have suspected from the suddenness of the colonel’s decision to whisk everyone off to India. Only, it wasn’t everyone, was it? John was sent to school in England. His father and sister didn’t go directly to India either, did they? They stopped off somewhere no one knew them while Frances gave birth to her illegitimate child.”
There was a pause. Very slowly, he nodded.
Frances had not been looking for scandal in Elizabeth’s past. She had been looking for her own baby, no doubt taken from her and put up for adoption, as Elizabeth’s had been. And like Elizabeth, she had hurt for the loss. Was that the source of the change several people had noted since her return from India?
A resurgence of pity filled Constance. Despite the fact that the girl had still behaved unforgivably to Elizabeth and Humphrey after that.
“Who was the baby’s father?” she asked quietly.
“I don’t know.”
She held Worcester’s gaze. “Mr. Darby?”
He gazed back.
“Rennie, the old head groom?”
Still he said nothing.
“Worcester, this man might have killed her. However badly she behaved, no one had the right to do that to her. To her family. You have to tell me. Or the police will have to be involved.” They might well have to be anyway, but she didn’t want to think about that just yet.
“It could have been either of them,” Worcester said hoarsely. “She was running wild, driving her father demented. Rennie took liberties, but she also rode over to Shelton Hall a good deal more often than Mrs. Darby knew. It was Miss Frances’s maid at the time who told me her mistress was with child. I had to tell the colonel, and arrangements were made at speed. All the servants were let go, so that any nasty rumors they spread would be taken as sour grapes and disbelieved. But in reality, the only people who knew—me and the maid—never said a word.”
“Where is that maid now?”
“With a new mistress in London. She was given a glowing character. I believe she just wants to forget her time at the Grange. It wasn’t happy for her.”
“Did the father know about her pregnancy?” Constance asked urgently.
“I have no idea. But I doubt it.”
Unless Frances cast it up when she came home again—another threat to hold over someone, whether for a practical reason or just to feel important. It could have been her death warrant.
Rennie had gone, but Darby was still here, and still married to a wife who thought he only flirted with other women.
More to the point, Sir Humphrey was still here, too. And he would not want his beloved Elizabeth to know he had fathered a child with Frances. Was that what Frances had meant when she’d told Elizabeth she was carrying Humphrey’s baby? That she had carried it five years ago?
And found it again…
Constance drew a breath and rubbed her forehead. “Thank you, Worcester. I think.”
*
Constance wished Solomon were here. As she walked back to The Willows, her brain seemed to be reeling with the huge discovery that Frances had given birth to a child five years ago, probably en route to India. Surely this information changed everything, and yet she wasn’t sure how.
Who had known about the baby at the time? Colonel Niall, Worcester, the lady’s maid who had left… Had Frances been examined by a doctor? Did Dr. Laing know? Constance rather doubted it. His view of Frances still seemed to be rose-tinted, and she doubted Colonel Niall would have let any local physician near his daughter after the maid’s discovery.
But a subtly different version of Frances was emerging in Constance’s mind. A curious, undisciplined girl, running wild and discovering forbidden pleasures—and, like many a curious girl before her, paying the price. Or at least some of it. She had probably imagined, in her naughty escapades, that she was taking control of her own life, doing exactly as she chose without interference. But pregnancy had ended that.
At last, Frances’s father had stepped in and acted decisively. Unlike Elizabeth’s parents, he had not thrown his daughter to the wolves. He had looked after her, overseen her confinement well away from prying eyes, and arranged for the adoption of the child.
Still, just like Elizabeth, Frances had lost her baby in the end. Elizabeth had chosen this path, for the good of the child, but had Frances? Weak, probably frightened, and with all a new mother’s turbulent emotions, was she given any choice? Had that loss of control then contributed to the behavior of the woman who returned from India? Seeking power over everyone, not necessarily for any reason other than that she needed it?
It made a sort of tragic sense to Constance. Even the woman’s deliberate nastiness to both Elizabeth and Humphrey was understandable if he were the father of her child, and he had paid no price at all, but gone on with his life and married someone else. To Frances, ironically, Elizabeth must have seemed a goody two-shoes, a perfectly behaved wife and stepmother. She had had no way of knowing that Elizabeth’s past was even more shocking than her own, whatever tale she had chosen to tell Sir Humphrey.
Humphrey… Constance had to speak to him alone. How was that to be contrived without Elizabeth knowing and asking questions? Constance had advised her friend to tell her husband the whole truth. Maybe Humphrey needed to do the same.
Just past Mrs. Phelps’s cottage, Constance became aware of Mrs. Phelps herself walking rapidly from the direction of the village, a basket over her arm.
“Good day, Mrs. Phelps.”
The woman grunted. “Not looking for me, are you?”
“I wasn’t, but I am happy to see you.”
“Why?” Mrs. Phelps asked. “Been listening to rumors, have you?”
“Sometimes there’s a trace of truth in rumors.”
“Not in this one. I didn’t poison the silly girl.”
Constance blinked. “Frances Niall?”
“Who else is dead?” The old woman stumped on, though not before Constance had seen that her basket was full of herbs.
“Wait,” she exclaimed, turning and catching up with the woman. “Who said Frances was poisoned, and why pick on you?”
Mrs. Phelps smiled sourly. “I’m the witch of the village now. And no one knows how she died. Blame me. What’s more, I taught myself about herbs—cheaper than yon quack up the road—and there’s some that leave no trace behind.”
She marched on, leaving Constance staring after her. Eventually, she turned back toward The Willows.
She and Solomon had been getting bogged down in Frances’s somewhat colorful life, looking for motive and forgetting about means. Everyone seemed to have reason to want rid of Frances, but how had she died? The doctors had found no trace of poison, but as Mrs. Phelps—and indeed the villagers, by the sound of things—were pointing out, not all poisons left a measurable trace.
She almost swung back yet again to seek out Dr. Laing or Dr. Murray, but she needed to straighten her thoughts first. She was still reeling from the discovery that Frances had borne a child that she was seeking—why was she doing that?—and now, poisons were filling her mind.
How on earth could Frances have been secretly poisoned without the rest of her household getting ill too?
Bingham …lacing her hot chocolate with venom? Worcester …contaminating her plate or her wine at dinner?
If Constance went down that road, then Elizabeth was again a possibility. They had drunk tea together, or something else before their walk beside the lake. She still didn’t believe Elizabeth capable of such a thing, and certainly not before Frances had told her about carrying Humphrey’s child. So thankfully, that theory made little sense.
Constance stopped in her tracks once more as another idea struck her.
Would Francis have poisoned herself ? Overcome by the awfulness she had made of her life, alienating everyone who loved her, and having assured herself of her child’s safety, had she decided to end it all?
Then the only crime was Frances’s, and her family had a different cross to bear. As did, perhaps, the father of her child.
Impatiently, Constance marched on. This was all mere speculation. As far as fact was concerned, she had the lowering feeling that she knew as little as she had when she first received Elizabeth’s plea for help.
“Where are you, Solomon?” she muttered aloud. “I need to talk to you now .”
*
Constance changed early for dinner and went down to the drawing room immediately, in the hope of finding Sir Humphrey alone. Instead, she found Elizabeth, sitting tensely upright on the sofa, twisting her hands together in her lap.
Refusing to waste time, Constance sat down beside her and said at once, “The night Frances died, did you and she drink tea or wine together?”
“We had a glass of wine. It made her company easier for me.”
“Did you both drink it all?”
“I didn’t,” Elizabeth said, frowning. “I only had a few sips before she suggested we walk. I think she drank all of hers, though.”
“Who poured the wine?”
“I did.”
“From a fresh bottle?”
“No, it was one Humph and I had drunk from at dinner. It was in the decanter. Does it matter?”
“I doubt it. Did she seem ill, that she wanted fresh air? Did you see any sign of illness or distress of any kind as you walked?”
“None. In fact, she set off pretty briskly when we parted.”
Constance was blundering in the dark here. She had no idea about poisonous herbs, or how long it took them to work, or what the symptoms might be. In any case, she was merely trying to prove, for the benefit of others, that Elizabeth could not have done it. And she was achieving nothing.
She sighed. “Elizabeth, do you think Frances was the kind of person who would ever take their own life?”
Elizabeth’s jaw dropped. “No,” she said emphatically.
“But she was not a happy person, was she? To behave as she did, say the things she did, she must have been terribly un happy.”
“Perhaps.” Elizabeth did not look convinced. “And I hardly think Colonel Niall would thank us for suggesting such a thing.”
“No, you’re probably right… Do you know anything about herbs?”
“For cooking?” Elizabeth asked, baffled by the change of subject.
“More for medicinal purposes.”
“Not really. My mother preferred modern physicians to wise women where health was concerned. Although I have heard it said that wise women are less likely to kill you!”
Constance, who had witnessed the sickening results of so-called wise women’s work in the back streets of London, did not believe that either.
“Do you think Frances had such knowledge?”
“If she did, she never spoke to me about it.”
Constance hadn’t truly expected such inquiries to bear much fruit. She was really just avoiding the other things she had to ask. There was a short silence, tense now on Constance’s part, and then Sir Humphrey walked into the room, and she was unspeakably relieved that she had not asked. It was best—probably—that she approach the man himself.
Her moment did not come until after dinner, when Elizabeth had gone upstairs to see to the children. Sir Humphrey had chosen not to linger alone with his port, but had brought it with him to the drawing room to be sociable. In fact, it was he who brought up the subject that Constance had been studiously avoiding over dinner.
“How goes your investigation, Mrs. Grey? What is it your husband hopes to learn in London? Or has he truly gone there on business purposes?”
“No, he went on your business, following a letter we found among Frances’s things. I suspect now he could have found the truth without going there, but at least it will be proof. May I ask you a private question, Sir Humphrey?”
A wary look entered his eyes. “If you must.”
“I really think I must. When you were courting Frances five years ago—”
“ Thinking of courting Frances,” he corrected her.
“I beg your pardon. Whatever your thoughts, I need to ask you exactly how intimate you were with her at that time.”
Color stained his cheeks. He tried to look haughty, but it was anger that chiefly showed. “Physically? You are asking if I took my neighbor’s gently born, unmarried daughter to bed?”
“Or anywhere else,” Constance said brazenly. “Were you physically intimate with her?”
“I most assuredly was not!” he exploded. “I am horrified that you need to ask. You may not think much of me, Mrs. Grey, but I am a man of honor, and had I overstepped the bounds of propriety in any way with Miss Niall, I should not have let her go to India but married her immediately. It would have been a terrible marriage, for both of us, but right is right!”
Constance sat back in her chair, metaphorically mopping her brow. Thank God . “I hoped you would say that. I apologize for asking. I’m afraid I have to further ignore good taste and ask if you ever heard rumors, either before or after the family went to India, about indiscretions on Miss Niall’s part?”
“None,” he said frigidly.
“Truly?”
He blinked. “I do not listen to gossip, Mrs. Grey. I advise you not to either.”
“Often, it is the only way to learn anything. Take heart, Sir Humphrey—I rarely pass it on. Do you have any idea what the police are looking into?”
“Everything and nothing,” he said, his scowl deepening. “They seem to have left off persecuting Elizabeth and are now annoying the villagers about anything and everything.”
“Ah. That might explain an odd encounter I had with Mrs. Phelps this afternoon. She seemed to think the villagers were accusing her .”
“It’s always the way of it. In a crisis, a woman alone is an easy target. One of the viler aspects of human nature.”
“But a perceptive one,” Constance said, covering her surprise.
“To be honest, I think the police investigation is doomed. There is nothing to show how poor Frances died, or even if anyone is to blame. I suspect we will never know the truth.”
“Does that bother you?”
“It bothers me that people might still look askance at Elizabeth. Even decent people like Colonel Niall.”
“Why does he believe so fervently in Elizabeth’s guilt? No one else seems to.”
He was silent for a moment, sipping his port. “I suspect…because Frances did not like her. He feels he is his daughter’s sole defender because, I suspect, by the time of her death, despite all her advantages of beauty and charm, no one else loved her. And that is sad.”
In fact, it was so sad, it made Constance want to cry.
She swallowed hard. “Did you notice a difference in her after her return from India?”
“What sort of difference?”
“Anything, really. I suppose she was a little older, a little wiser. Was she calmer? More unhappy? Less flirtatious or lively?”
“Yes, I think she was outwardly calmer. I suppose she had grown up. Certainly, she was a little more circumspect in her behavior, but then, she was beyond the age when flirtatiousness can be put down to innocence. I thought she had grown kinder…until she said what she did about Elizabeth.”
“You don’t believe her,” Constance said carefully. “And yet I think things are not quite right between you and Elizabeth.”
He smiled with more than a hint of bitterness. “Ironic, is it not? That in death she finally comes between us.”
“Only if you let her,” Constance said, and smiled brightly toward the door as she heard Elizabeth’s footsteps approaching across the hall.
*
For two nights Solomon had lain beside her, without touching her except by accident. She had imagined she could never sleep in such a situation, but to her astonishment, she had found only a unique comfort in his nearness. So much so that she had once wakened cuddled into his shoulder. She had taken her time to roll away from him, telling herself she didn’t want to wake him with sudden movement.
This night, lying alone and staring into the darkness, she missed him.
Not just that peculiar comfort, or the way they could discuss the mystery before them. But him . His very presence.
Constance wanted to explore that, for she was curious by nature. It was part of friendship and trust, of course, to sleep in someone else’s presence. She had experienced that, but it had never been with a man before.
Am I falling seriously in love with Solomon?
She hoped not. It would be disastrous and could easily end the fragile friendship between them. The best she could hope for was that he missed her too.
Meanwhile, she tried to think of her next path of inquiry. She should talk to one of the doctors about poisons. She also still needed to find out who had been Frances’s lover. Her last lover.
As she began to drift off to sleep, she jolted awake again. What if Frances had returned to the father of her child? Had he given her the silver bracelet? If so, he must be relatively well off, no servant or farm laborer. A well-to-do tenant farmer, perhaps. Or the vicar’s son. She had not spoken to him yet…
Her dreams were troubled, full of threat and insult, but she woke more determined than ever to find out what had truly happened to Frances. This was no longer just for Elizabeth’s sake. It was for Frances herself.