Chapter 17 #3
“You see the misery he has caused in the district, through your brother’s work as well as your own, and dislike it.
You think it is intolerable that one man should be allowed to impoverish so many.
We talked about it many times because I share your disdain for his methods,” he explains, then turns to me with a glint in his eyes.
“If you are looking for a motive, Miss Hyde-Clare, then I suggest you start there. Her brother will confirm it all.”
“That is the motive for half the village!” Miss Burgess says dismissively.
“It is like saying I killed him because I do not like rain. It is nonsense! How am I even meant to have done it? He was killed in the early hours of the morning, right? I am a lone woman and would never dare to traverse the distance in the dead of night. I lack the nerve.”
Mr. Nutting says she had nerve aplenty when she would meet him at the barn behind the mill, causing Mrs. Holcroft to mutter, “Detestable creature.”
That is true.
He is horrible, and if I could make him the guilty party with a wave of my hand, I would do so in an instant.
Except I would not.
The use of magic violates the investigator’s code.
Stricken, Miss Burgess sinks into the armchair and says with wonder, “You really are going to send me to the gallows to avoid purchasing the cottage.”
Mr. Nutting lifts his chin with self-righteous puffery and tuts at her myopia. “Now, now, my dear, I am not responsible for your actions.”
Detestable creature is too kind.
Impatient with his son’s progress, Mr. Holcroft strides across the room to stand at Sebastian’s shoulders and hurry him along. “It cannot be difficult to render a verdict. It is obvious to everyone in the room she did it. All avenues of escape are closed to her.”
Quietly, with none of her earlier confidence, Miss Burgess says, “The handwriting does not match. It cannot match.”
Mr. Holcroft begs to disagree. “I have not done a point-by-point comparison, but at a glance I can see the samples share similarities. The capital D, for instance. You and the killer both extend the letter to the left in a curving loop. It is unmistakable.”
Miss Burgess laughs bitterly.
It is a chilling sound.
“Damned by divine affectation,” she says with a grim smile.
Chester, who has also grown weary of waiting for an official pronouncement, struggles to scrutinize the text himself.
Bobbing left and right to catch a glimpse over the breadth of his father’s shoulders, he spares Miss Burgess a severe glance and tartly advises her not to compound her sins by drawing God into her wickedness.
“You are sister to the vicar. I would expect better of you!”
He sounds genuinely affronted.
As though it is the statement that is beyond the pale, not her affair with a married man.
Peeved by his sanctimony, Miss Burgess snaps, “Not d-i-v-i-n-e, you ninnyhammer. D-e-v-i-n-e. That is my mother’s maiden name.
It was she who taught us how to write, and she had a particularly flourishy hand, which she learned from her father.
If that is to be the death of me, then I am allowed to damn it, and I can damn God, too, if I want. Damn Him, damn Nutting, damn you!”
Defiance is all she has left.
Defiance or resignation.
It is a wonder she is able to muster any of the former, for what Mr. Holcroft said is true: All avenues of escape are closed to her.
The only hope she has is to convince us to continue to follow the chain of possession to her housekeeper’s door.
But if the servant actually did steal it, then in all likelihood she will swear she had long since sold it to pay for food or coal, leaving Miss Burgess with the impossible task of proving a negative.
Chester huffs in insult, then announces that the scripts are replicas of each other.
“Seb might not have the spine to say it, but I do. The handwritings are identical! Miss Burgess killed Keast! She knew her handwriting would reveal the truth. That is why she gave a verbal reply to my father’s missive.
Someone summon Jenner to take her away.”
Resignation takes hold then.
Miss Burgess, her face bereft of color, drops her head in defeat.
A lone tear drops onto her hand, then another and another.
She is weeping.
I cannot stand it.
Murder is terrible and I wholly condemn it, and living by the investigator’s code means I must harden myself against the anguish of an apprehended killer.
Mr. Nutting, as detestable as he is, is correct about one thing: Miss Burgess is responsible for Miss Burgess’s actions.
Even so, it hurts my heart, and I look down at my lap to close it all out, a futile act if there ever was one, for the first thing I see is the puce shawl. It is lying on the floor, half under a chair.
Damnation!
If only she had used that middling strip of cloth or any of the other half dozen in the valise, then she would not be in this predicament. What had she been thinking?
Oh, but that is the question, isn’t it?
What had Miss Burgess been thinking?
Too calculating for a thoughtless mistake, she had spent weeks, if not months, mapping out every aspect of her scheme. Attributing the murder to a poor widow had been a choice. It did not happen by default or because she could not think of another fiction.
By the same token, she had made a particular decision to leave the Madame Valenaire shawl next to the dead steward’s corpse.
To what end?
Only one possibility occurs to me: She wanted to implicate Nutting in the murder.
In a stroke that perhaps put too much faith in Mr. Jenner’s interest in obtaining justice for a steward, she had expected him to note the discrepancy between the quality of the silk and the situation of the widow.
Once the constable realized the self-professed lover was a lie, he would begin to look closer to home, at which point Mr. Nutting’s well-known animosity toward the steward would make him an ideal candidate.
Witnesses would recognize the shawl and identify it as belonging to his family, and he would refuse to reply rather than reveal he had given the garment to his mistress.
And why would Miss Burgess go through all these dark machinations to punish her lover?
That is obvious, no?
The shawl, the shawl, the cursed shawl!
She said it herself: A fine one you are, telling me you cannot afford a cottage when you buy fripperies like that!
The resentment it must have stirred!
Although hardly sanguine, this revelation offers me some comfort because it means Miss Burgess is not as hapless as she appears. She tried to do to Mr. Nutting what he succeeded in doing to her: ensure the other was all rolled up.
They are cut from the same cloth.
A wholly dispiriting consequence of pursuing the investigative path is coming into frequent contact with detestable creatures.
I wonder how Bea can bear it.
Sebastian does not quite confirm his brother’s assessment, noting that the handwritings are not exact copies.
“It seems as though she made an effort to alter her style. You can see it in the angle of the letters. But there are too many points of similarity to ignore, especially in light of the other evidence against Miss Burgess. I agree that the constable should be summoned. I shall wait while the rest of the party returns home. It has been a long day.”
His mother applauds this sensible suggestion, rising to her feet as the door to the room opens and Mr. Burgess enters the room. Warned by the footman of the horde, he is not disconcerted to see so many of us in his home and greets us cordially with an apology for not being here sooner to greet us.
“I know it is late, and you may be eager to be on your way, but I am hoping to tempt you with a glass of port or sherry,” he says convivially. “It is a rare occasion for us to be blessed with so many of our neighbors, isn’t that right, Eliza?”
As vicar, he has cultivated an air of command, a sense of control, as if he had everything well in hand, and I watch as his sister responds to it, lifting her head slowly to look at him with a desperate glimmer in her eyes, as though he had the power to save her.
Divine intervention.
And then the truth hits me like in a vast, overwhelming wave: divine retribution.