Chapter 12 #3
“But now I am interested in the Russian flame one in particular,” I add because the truth can no longer be avoided.
It is all well and good to invent pretexts and ramble like Mama and tell insignificant lies, but sometimes an investigation must be conducted through direct means.
“If you would be so kind as to call your husband back and ask him where he put it? I do not expect it will be there still, but we should check.”
Miss Nutting leaps to her feet with a shriek. “Not my beautiful shawl! It cannot be gone. Do not say it is gone. What did you do with it? Mother, tell her to give it back!”
Mrs. Nutting, however, is cleverer than her daughter and realizes the implication.
“But the killer is a widow from another village. Olivia Jenner is the wife of the constable, and she told us the killer is a widow who lives in Flitstone or Mickle Hill. She said it was comeuppance for Keast’s casting her off.
My husband does not believe it. Alan swears that Keast was too busy thinking of new ways to wreak havoc on the community to spare time for any woman, and he would have said precisely that in his message to George if I had not put my foot down.
One does not mention, even obliquely, the romantic entanglements of one’s neighbor’s employee in a note of condolence.
But that is how I know the killer is a widow from Flitstone or Mickle Hill and can have nothing to do with my daughter’s shawl. ”
I agree that it is confounding. “I have no way of explaining it either. But I do know this: The description of Miss Nutting’s shawl matches the one found in Mr. Keast’s bedroom. The connection appears to exist even if it cannot be explained as yet.”
Do I mention the central premise of my theory?
I do not!
“Direct means” does not mean direct means.
It means as direct as necessary to get what I want.
Obviously, I have no intention of putting my prime suspects on high alert.
Miss Nutting’s agitation increases at the prospect of her beloved Russian flame shawl being used to snuff out the life of the man whom she had sworn to love with or without his consent. “Fate cannot be so cruel.”
Her mother tries to quell her with a look, but the girl is defiant.
“I do not care how straitened we are. I will mention Mr. Keast whenever I feel like it, and there is nothing you can do to stop me,” she adds with a sullen moue, overlooking the fact that her parents hold the purse strings.
One week without pin money and she will change her mind quickly enough.
Presumably, her mother has been thinking the same thing, because she does not bother to respond to the sulky announcement. She marches into the hallway in search of her husband. I follow her to his study, where he is sliding a pair of spectacles onto the bridge of his nose.
Having just left us comfortably settled in the drawing room, he regards us with surprise as he rises from his chair to greet his wife amiably at the entrance and asks if it is wise to leave Jane alone.
“She appears more distraught than ever. I would help alleviate the burden, but I must attend to my correspondence, which I have put off too long.”
He gestures vaguely at his desk, which contains four neat stacks of papers, and although I raise my chin a little to improve my vantage, I am simply too far away to get a glimpse of his handwriting.
I cannot even tell which documents bear his cursive.
It is a disappointing turn, as Mr. Nutting is currently my favored suspect: He dislikes Keast, resents the steward’s plans for enclosing the land, and had the murder weapon in his possession as recently as May.
Moreover, he has the strength to strangle a man to death, would not hesitate to travel along a dark road in the dead of night, and could easily climb through the window he had the foresight to leave open earlier in the evening.
If only I could convince him to invite us to sit down.
What if I suddenly have a leg cramp?
Would that oblige him to offer me a seat?
Having no wish to linger, Mrs. Nutting briskly promises not to take up much of her husband’s time. “If you will give me Jane’s Russian flame shawl, we shall be on our way.”
Furrowing his brow as he contemplates her over the rim of his eyeglasses, he apologizes for not following her line of thought. “I do not understand. Jane’s what?”
Mildly annoyed by his confusion, she elaborates tartly, “Her shawl in Russian flame. She did not like the color and gave it to Hester, who gave it to Mrs. Todd, who gave it to Hewitt, who gave it to you.”
The litany amuses her husband, who smiles in comprehension and says, “Oh, I see, you are asking about the orange scarf.”
Mrs. Nutting indulges a light theatrical shudder and insists she most certainly is not. “It is a lovely warm pinkish tan—Russian flame.”
As the distinction is meaningless to him, he responds with an apathetic shrug and says, “Regardless, I gave it away.”
It is a shock for Mrs. Nutting, who lurches backward, her whole body recoiling as though she has been shot, and gawks at him with her mouth wide open. “You…what?”
He repeats the abomination. “I gave it away.”
But his tone is more forceful as he begins to suspect he made a miscalculation of some sort, and he pushes the spectacles higher on his nose as his wife continues to gape at him as though he is unbalanced.
“You gave it away? A shawl by Madame Valenaire? A silk shawl by Madame Valenaire from this season? Do you have any idea how precious an au courant Madame Valenaire silk shawl is? Ten pounds, John. You disposed of a garment that cost our household ten pounds! Ten pounds!”
With every repetition of the price, Mr. Nutting flinches, for it is not an insignificant amount of money, and he owns himself astonished to discover the item was so dear.
“I thought it was a castoff! Jane gave it to her maid! I assumed our daughter had more sense than to give an article of value to her maid, and then her maid did not want it, so she gave it to Mrs. Todd. As she also did not want it, she gave it to Hewitt, who passed it to me during our weekly meeting, and as I had no use for it, I gave it away. I thought it was better that it go to someone who needed a scarf than it become a kitchen rag. The color is atrocious, but beggars cannot be choosers.”
Mrs. Nutting, who had pressed a hand to her heart at the thought of a Madame Valenaire original being used in the scullery to dry saucepans, bobbles unsteadily on her feet, as though in danger of swooning. “Russian flame is a lovely warm pinkish tan!”
“On that point, I defer to you, my dear,” he says graciously.
The civility does little to appease his wife, who demands to know where the shawl is now. “To whom did you give it and how may I find them?”
He is appalled by the question. “It was a charitable donation, Grace. You cannot just take it back! We would be the laughingstock of the neighborhood if they knew you hounded a peasant into returning a scarf. The gossips would snicker and the speculation about our situation would be ruinous. They will say we are one step above paupers. No, I will not tell you where I donated the damnable thing. Instead, we will have a conversation about your spending habits. Paying ten pounds for a scarf is indefensible, and even if our daughter is a featherbrain for giving it away, the graver sin is purchasing it for her in the first place. Clearly, she does not have the depth of character to appreciate something of real value.”
Although the look on Mrs. Nutting’s face is stormy, she does not repeat the mistake of forgetting my presence and refrains from pressing her husband in my presence.
Whether her efforts will bear fruit remains indeterminate, I can readily imagine her walking the streets of Lower Bigglesmeade, examining every passerby for the garment in question.
“Come, Miss Hyde-Clare, we must allow Alan to return to his business, for he is a busy man and does not have time for our chatter,” she says, looping her arm through mine and giving it a hardy tug to propel me toward the entry hall.
As we approach the front door, which Hewitt has opened in expectation of my ejection, she thanks me again for my assistance with Jane.
“Your curiosity is natural. To be candid, I could wish my Jane had a little more of it. But I cannot allow my family to become enmeshed in a murder just so you can appease your curiosity. If word of this very, very slight connection should spread, I will know whom to blame. Do keep that in mind and give my best to your parents during this troubling time.”
Then she pushes me over the threshold and slams the door shut behind me.