Chapter Fourteen #3
The young woman who had let us into the house had turned into a fierce adversary.
I felt the warning in her voice and at the same time felt lucky she was warning me.
“Someone has to ask these questions,” I said.
“The police are not here, and a man was murdered. The fact that nobody in the village seemed to have much use for him doesn’t matter.
An investigation has to be done, and while I am a lady, that doesn’t mean I have no experience in investigating a crime.
I’ve investigated with the police and for the police, so I do know a little about this. ”
She gazed at me through narrowed eyes.
“One thing I know,” I continued, “is that we can’t wait for Sergeant Hewitt to return before asking questions. Evidence disappears. Witnesses forget things.”
Without taking her gaze from mine, she sank into a wooden chair pulled up to a worktable in the center of the room.
She gestured for me to take the other one.
When I seated myself, she leaned forward.
“I don’t like the questions you asked my dad.
He wouldn’t have killed Dr. Penhollow, but his answers might make him look guilty. ”
“I am sorry if it appears that we are accusing either of you, or even suspecting you of the crime. There’s nothing easy about a murder investigation.
But the questions must be asked. We have to know people’s whereabouts.
Verify statements. Understand relationships.
Sometimes we have to poke at wounds that are not quite healed.
We aren’t intentionally trying to hurt your father or accuse him, but he has helped me to better understand Dr. Penhollow and the rather high-handed manner in which he treated his neighbors. ”
“We were all angry with Dr. Penhollow when my mum died. My brother and me, too. My dad was raging at first, but he finally came to see the truth. My mum wanted to take the medicine. She didn’t know how much longer she had, and it was hard for her even to draw a breath.
If that drug could cure the infection, she was willing, even eager, to take that chance. ”
“I understand.”
“So did my dad, eventually. He misses her and probably resents the decision she made, but he does know it was her decision, not the doctor’s.”
“Have you and your brother come to the same conclusion?”
She rolled her eyes. “I have. As for my brother, you can ask him yourself. He and his wife live in the stone house up by the church.” She paused for a moment and studied my face. “You’ve heard my dad’s story. What can I tell you to make you believe you shouldn’t be suspecting him?”
When I’d followed her into the room, I’d noticed two pairs of gum boots against the wall by the back door. My gaze landed on them now. Maggie glanced at them and back at me in confusion. I gestured to the boots. “May I?”
She shrugged and waved me on.
I ignored the smaller pair, which were obviously Maggie’s, and picked up one of the larger boots.
A little muddy, as one might expect considering the recent rain.
No sign of blood, nor were they freshly cleaned.
The size seemed even bigger than the ones that had been pushed onto Dr. Penhollow’s feet.
I had measured those against my own boots and did the same with this pair.
These were larger. They couldn’t be Dr. Penhollow’s missing boots.
I wasn’t sure what I would have done if I had found them, but I was relieved that I hadn’t.
I didn’t want Mr. Rallison to be guilty.
Maggie watched me but made no comment on what must have seemed an unusual action on my part. I returned to stand by the chair. “I don’t suppose there was any medication left over from your mother’s illness, was there?”
She studied me for a moment, tapping her fingers on the table, then came to her feet.
“Maybe.” She left the room, then turned right, away from the sitting room.
Before I could even consider snooping, she returned with a brown glass bottle a little taller than her hand, with a narrow neck and a cork stopper.
She handed it to me. “This is all that was left.”
“Thank you,” I said, slipping it into the market bag.
“Dr. Penhollow died the morning after the gale, didn’t he?” she asked.
I agreed that was the case.
“Our neighbor and her little boy were over here by six o’clock that morning. A branch broke through one of their windows when the storm brought a tree down between our houses.”
I’d noticed the tree when we arrived.
“It’s a giant thing. You can see it for yourself.
When it came down, it woke us, too. We all went outside to inspect the damage.
Our neighbor brought her baby over here so they could stay warm and dry while her husband boarded over the window.
Dad was here the whole time, and she can vouch for that. ”
While that information might have given me comfort two days ago, now that the idea of poison had been considered, that window of time was less relevant. “Have you ever paid Dr. Penhollow for his services in anything other than money?” I asked.
Her eyes grew wide, and she let out a bark of laughter. “The only time we used Dr. Penhollow’s services, he killed my mum. We didn’t pay him for that.”