Chapter 7 #2
Tucking Eternally Devoted’s missive into my pocket, I make sure the letter is properly positioned on the writing table and decide it should be a little more centered. As I slide it an inch to the left, I catch sight of my name in the middle of a paragraph.
Mrs. Dowell was writing about me!
I want to be shocked, but gossiping about one’s guests is de rigueur for a house party, and Mrs. Dowell has the right to describe me in any way she likes.
Her privacy must be respected.
Must be respected?
To be sure, yes, but by an intruder with greater self-control than me.
Indifferent to the violation, I lean closer and find the beginning of the sentence: “Miss Hyde-Clare is a remarkably slight thing to have caused Father so much trouble. Seb is smitten, of course, which is only to be expected, as he has long cherished a fondness for slight things. Sarah believes we can rout her by treating her with chilly propriety, but I told her it will not work, as the girl does not appear clever enough to realize we are insulting her. But you know how Machiavellian Sarah can be with her machinations. She fixes on her scheme and cannot see how it has no chance of prospering. She still thinks Seb can be persuaded to offer for Miss Jenner, a plan she has been trying to bring across the finishing line since Christmas, to no avail.”
The letter continues, moving on to the tedium of Chester’s efforts to persuade the rest of his family to adopt his eating habits, then complaining about her mother’s plans to redecorate the drawing room.
“She is set on a garishly vibrant yellow because Mrs. Jenner called the current color scheme ‘bleak.’ The spiteful old shrew was just being vicious, for the assortment of blues is soothing and genial, but Mother will not listen to reason. Thus I have been obliged to look at fabric swatches in shades of yellow so bright I can only conclude her plan is to thwart Mrs. Jenner’s judgment by making her so blind she cannot see the room. ”
Next, she disparages her father’s work habits.
Do I read to the end?
You may be assured that I do.
Having decided to invade Mrs. Dowell’s privacy, I might as well invade her privacy. Keeping to the portion of the letter that mentions me does nothing to restore its sanctity. The walls have been breached, as they say.
Besides, I am curious.
Furthermore, it is heartening to see that she holds members of her own family in the same low esteem as she hold me.
It makes her opinion a little less hurtful.
But only a little.
As I return the letter to its proper position, I wonder if Mrs. Dowell destroyed the evidence to protect someone else.
If she had recognized the shawl from its description, then she would have good cause to believe the owner is the murderer.
Or maybe the garment is hers, as I suspect, and she assumes that one of her sisters borrowed it to kill Keast.
It is worth keeping in mind.
I take a step back to make sure the escritoire looks exactly the way it did when I entered the room and confirm that nothing is amiss. Satisfied with my light touch, I swivel on my heels and stride to the entrance, where I listen for the patter of footfalls or conversation.
Nothing.
Presumably, that means the coast is clear.
Sarah is at the vicarage with her sisters, so I do not have to worry about her finding me looming over her writing table.
But what about a servant? As I made no provisions for the second sister’s lady’s maid, she could stumble across me at any moment.
Or she could already be in the room, brushing out the wrinkles of the gown Sarah intends to wear to dinner.
There is no way to know!
Well, there is one way to know.
And it requires courage.
But also a pretext.
If I am going to visit Sarah’s room, then I need a reason to be there.
If only I had had the foresight to bring a book with me or a newspaper or even my embroidery. I could run to the other wing to fetch the latter, but leaving and then coming back feels needlessly risky.
Just come up with something, I think impatiently. It does not have to be clever.
The beloved earrings from my grandmother, then.
I lost one of the hoops last night while in the drawing room, and since Sarah was sitting next to me on the settee, I wondered if it might have gotten caught on her clothing.
Is it facile?
Sure.
But it makes sense in a panic-stricken, hysterical-female way.
All I have to do to make my extreme agitation plausible is raise my voice to a higher register, which is easy enough. I do it all the time when arguing with Russell.
With all due caution, I step into the hallway and cross to Sarah’s door, which I tap lightly.
Receiving no response, I knock again, more firmly this time, and wait for a few seconds before deciding it is safe to enter.
I duck my head into the room and call out softly for Miss Holcroft.
Even as I am walking into her bedchamber, I am offering my deepest apologies for interrupting her repose.
Fortunately, I am apologizing to an empty room.
Somewhat smaller than her older sister’s quarters, Sarah’s bedchamber is almost significantly more cluttered, with larger pieces of furniture and jars, canisters, and books on every surface.
Her writing table is buried under a pile of scarves, shawls, and spencers, as though she tosses a new item on the stack every day.
The one on top is the pistache wrap she wore last night, which had failed to draw my particular notice because it is far from the first stare of fashion.
A broad field of cream with small pink flowers, it bore the blandly simple floral design that was popular a few years ago.
If Sarah is the killer, then this is precisely the sort of shawl she should have used to squeeze the life out of Mr. Keast. I would have had no trouble believing an impoverished country widow owned such an antiquated garment.
I would have still marveled at the shortsightedness of leaving it behind but would have attributed it to the horrifying shock of strangulation. It cannot be easy to think clearly in the immediate aftermath of discovering oneself capable of murder.
But the killer had left the shawl behind along with the letter, both of which were calculated acts deliberately designed to point us in a specific direction.
Sarah, whom Mrs. Dowell calls Machiavellian, would have the clarity of purpose to write almost a dozen letters in the wake of the murder.
Furthermore, the fact that she had shared a governess with her sister might explain why Mrs. Dowell’s writing came so close to matching Eternally Devoted’s.
The two women had been taught by the same hand.
Sarah is the culprit.
She has to be.
To prove it, I approach the escritoire gingerly, uncertain as how to get to the surface below without disturbing the pile beyond repair.
I know it is unlikely that Sarah would recall the precise order of the garments, and yet I am wary of leaving a trail.
The first moment she should realize that the jig is up is when the constable arrives at the house.
Oh, but if I cannot get to the surface without a great deal of bother, then neither can the room’s occupant.
Using her escritoire as an impromptu clothes press, Sarah would choose to do her writing elsewhere, and I glance at the vanity, which is covered with hairpins and ribbons, before settling my gaze on the night table.
As with the other pieces in the room, it is strewn with items, but the thicket is less dense, with a teacup resting on a pair of books.
It is too much to hope they are the first two installments of The Fate of the Dark Dawn trilogy, but as I grow closer I am pleased to see that one of the volumes is a gothic.
The suspect’s reading tastes align with my theory.
Now let’s see about her handwriting.
The second tome is a religious polemic about the power of faith called The Blacksmith’s Son, and it details the struggles of an ironworker who renounces his wicked ways, grows devout, and dies young.
Although I know it would have been impossibly convenient for the book to be a diary or journal, I am nevertheless disappointed when it is neither.
Still, I manage to rally my flagging spirits, opening Trecothick Bower in the hope that it contains an inscription by the owner.
Alas, it does not.
Discouraged, I pick up the Henry Draper work and turn to the title page.
It is pristine, so I inspect the inside front cover, then the inside back cover.
Finding neither scribble nor scrawl, I toss the book onto the bed in annoyance, keenly aware that I cannot ransack the room in my frustration. I must proceed in an orderly fashion.
With a sigh of defeat, I reach for the book on the counterpane, and as I pick it up, a slip of paper drops out. Softly, it flutters to the bed.
Well, well, well.
Keeping my expectations in check, I retrieve a page from the book or, more likely, the slip of paper that fell from the book, and notice at a glance that the script bears no resemblance to Eternally Devoted’s or Mrs. Dowell’s.
Its letters are stiff and straight, displaying none of the fluidity of the other two, and there are blotches every few words, an indication that the writer paused frequently.
In regard to the text, it takes issue with Draper’s understanding of God’s mercy, arguing against his harsh condemnation of sinners and advancing an ethos of universal forgiveness regardless of the depth and scale of their iniquity.
Each contention is linked to a specific page number, and toward the bottom of the sheet, after the last assertion, the author of the critique added a note acknowledging that none of her thoughts are particularly profound: “Assuredly, my sisters had them before me, especially Margaret, who can look at a cloudless sky and criticize it for being too blue.”
Ah, so it is Sarah’s handwriting after all.