Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Sebastian is right.
Over and over again, I asked how an exquisite shawl made of the finest-quality silk could have wound up in the possession of an impoverished widow in Bedfordshire, and now I have the answer.
It is Miss Nutting’s castoff.
The sequence of events is shocking, and I am as aghast as the girl’s mother at how the beautiful garment had passed from one set of hands to another until it was tossed into a trunk with other donations, thereby removing the largest impediment to the theory of the embittered villager.
Does it pain me to acknowledge the accuracy of Sebastian’s speculation?
Not in the least.
As an investigator, I owe my allegiance to the evidence.
I must go where it leads, and in this instance, it leads to Lower Bigglesmeade.
As I have no desire to continue in the wrong direction, I am grateful for the correction and gladly reexamine my previous assumptions in light of the new revelation.
Devil it, it does pain me!
I am trying to be stoic again, but it is impossible.
The consequences of this reversal are huge.
All I want is for Sebastian to admire my pluck and daring and intelligence and to apologize for underestimating me, so that I can graciously offer my forgiveness.
Is that really so much to ask?
But now I am forced to reexamine all my previous conclusions.
The connection to The Fate of the Dark Dawn, for example.
It had struck me as obvious, but perhaps it is a product of my own bias.
I thought there was a link, so I found a link.
In retrospect, I can see that “eternally devoted” is not an especially obscure way for a lover to sign her letters, and it is substantially different from Georgiana’s “yr. eternal beloved.”
And ponds!
A great many villages have ponds.
The countryside is riddled with them!
That I was able to attribute the mention of a small body of water to a particular source is further proof that I was looking for the association in order to draw it.
I made the same mistake with the open window in the music room.
Because the murder happened on the night of the dinner party, I convinced myself that had to mean the killer was one of the guests.
But all sorts of tradesmen and shopkeepers are in and out of Red Oaks all the time, and any one of them could have taken advantage of the hubbub preceding the party to sneak upstairs.
Mrs. Jackson would be too busy to notice, what with the additional housekeeping responsibilities created by my family’s visit and dinner preparations for the neighbors.
These thoughts occupy me as I walk back to Red Oaks from the Nutting estate, and although the distance is approximately three miles, it feels like only one, for the peel comes into view far sooner than I would have liked.
I do not relish seeing Sebastian.
For the first time since I met him, there is not a slight tremor of excitement at the prospect of being near him again.
Hurt by his lack of respect for my intelligence, I am deeply reluctant to admit that his conclusion was correct and mine is wrong.
The confession will add weight to his belief that I am flighty, or slight, as Mrs. Dowell describes me in her letter.
I am weighty—though not too weighty, as I should hate to be mistaken for a political hostess, like Mrs. Palmer, or the sort of girl who tussles with bulls, like that female matador…
what’s her name…on the Peninsula—and the fact that I am compelled to assert my weightiness to Sebastian is highly troubling.
We are in a race, I think, and I am barely keeping up.
A race is not a partnership.
Sebastian and I are not partners.
If we are not partners, then we are not equals, and if we are not equals, then I am wasting my time.
This visit has been a disaster from the very beginning, with his mother sneering quaint at me and my suspecting his sisters of murder.
For weeks I thought all I had to do was make a decent showing and Sebastian would propose, and now as I trudge across the field, weighty and weightless at the same time, I am annoyed by the intractability of his scruples.
Damn his rigid code.
If he loved me, he would want to marry me.
If he wanted to marry me, he would propose without his father’s sanction.
He is a full-grown man of thirty years of age.
(Well, in fourteen months he will be.)
It is time for him to act like one!
Or is it past time?
Maybe our moment has already come and gone.
Stricken by the possibility that our love may not in fact be fated, I walk even faster, as if to outrun my own sadness, and by the time I knock on the front door of Red Oaks, I am winded.
If the butler notices my labored breathing, he does not reveal it by word or deed, merely observing that dinner will be served in little more than an hour.
An hour!
That means everyone else is already changing for the meal.
I should be changing, too. I am too miserable to even consider eating, and with my naturally rosy cheeks, my appearance cannot even take on an air of delicate tragedy like Miss Nutting.
Mama must be beside herself with anxiety by now, alternately terrified that I have been taken by a highwayman and horrified that I will not have enough time to prepare for dinner. It is impossible to say which would upset the poor dear more: a ransom note or ill-placed hairpins.
Glumly, I climb the stairs, keenly aware of the contrast with earlier in the day, when I bounded down the steps full of purpose to find the killer even at potentially great cost to myself. How fearlessly I crept into Mrs. Dowell’s bedchamber and invaded her privacy to evaluate her handwriting.
I stop.
Mid-step, my foot hovering inches from the next tread, I am struck by the glaring flaw in Sebastian’s theory: the letters.
Even if they were not modeled on The Fate of the Dark Dawn, the hand that composed them is impeccable.
Practiced and precise, the cursive belongs to a man whose education included extensive instruction in penmanship.
A peasant destined to till the field would not have spent so much of his education learning how to form perfect script letters.
The killer is a gentleman.
It is the only explanation that fits the circumstance.
Is he a gentleman who has come down in the world and now works the land?
Probably.
Impoverishment happens with alarming regularity: bad investments or an uncontrolled gambling habit or an evil guardian who siphons all his funds.
That piece is easy enough to slot into place.
But the shawl.
How to fit Madame Valenaire’s exquisite shawl into the puzzle?
Perhaps it fell into his hands by chance.
The recipient of Mr. Nutting’s unintentional munificence, he recognized the shawl’s value and began to construct an elaborate fiction around it to enact revenge against the steward.
Oh, but that does not hold water either.
If my newly hypothesized gentleman of reduced circumstances recognized the shawl’s value, then he would never have put it in the hands of an impoverished widow, and if he had conceived of the scheme independent of the garment, then he would have used a shawl of far less value.
There is no way around concluding that the embittered-villager theory is nonsensical, and I return to my original notion, which is much more logical.
Significantly, I have only Mr. Nutting’s word that he gave the shawl away, and he is far from an unimpeachable source.
If he had used the garment to murder Mr. Keast, then he would not have said anything different.
Donating it to charity is a conveniently difficult story to disprove.
Swiveling on my heels, I dart down the staircase.
Mrs. Nutting said that her husband sent a letter extending his condolences.
All I have to do is find it, and now is the perfect moment to look because the rest of the occupants are upstairs preparing for dinner.
To Mr. Holcroft’s study!
Having searched the private quarters of half the family already today, I am not as anxious about the intrusion as I might have been.
Without pausing to consider the wisdom of my actions, I venture to my right, along the corridor that leads to the conservatory, and stop short of reaching the end.
As I open the door to the study, I arrange my features in a look of surprise.
Oh, wait, this is Mr. Holcroft’s study, not the library?
Surprised face!
Fortunately, the precaution is not necessary.
The room is empty.
Relieved, I close the door behind me, take a moment to regain my breath, and dart to the desk to begin searching.
It is a mess.
For a man who prides himself on taking a scientifical approach to crop cultivation, his workspace is in wild disarray.
Before touching anything, I step back and take stock of what I see: two ledgers, three newspapers, two journals, five calling cards, a Bible, four bills of sale, a legal document of indeterminate significance, three letters addressed to Mr. Holcroft, and one partially finished letter addressed to Mr. Keast’s parents.
And that is just the top layer.
There are more papers underneath.
Daunted by the prospect of looking through the private business matters of Sebastian’s father, I decide to start with the easy thing—confirming he is not a murderer—and draw closer to the desk to inspect his handwriting.
Happily, it is as tight and illegible as his youngest daughter’s.
Next, I bend down to read the names on the bottom of the three letters: Errol Landry, Jacob Hooper, Carl Radd.
Well, that takes care of the easy things.
Now I must dig.
It does not sit well, invading the privacy of my host, but there is nothing to be done about it. Justice demands high courage, not niggling squeamishness.