Chapter 37
“Did you pass anyone in the corridor when you were going back to your room, Dolly?” asked Edwina. “Anyone at all?”
Dolly screwed up her eyes and thought as hard as she could. “I suppose I passed George and Vincent…they’re the ones that sang opposite Libby and Miss Shandy. They were going to their own dressing rooms.”
“Tell me about George and Vincent,” said Edwina. “Did they fraternize with the actresses?”
“No, not at all. And especially not with Libby. They are serious singers, and Vincent is from Italy. He scorned the fact that Libby could not read and I had to teach her the libretto.”
Edwina gave a nod to show she was listening.
Before Pevensey had left the room, he had whispered in her ear, “Find out her last name and where she got her education.” Over the course of the conversation, she had noticed, just like he had, that Dolly’s diction was far more mannerly than one would expect.
And besides that, the letters she had written for Libby were penned by an educated hand.
Had Dolly attended a seminary for young ladies just like Edwina and Helena had?
Dolly had already refused to reveal her surname, but Edwina decided to continue probing. “How is it that you know Italian, Dolly?”
Dolly’s face shuttered like a window at curfew time. “I don’t know,” she said sullenly.
Edwina continued to offer a friendly smile. “Well, never mind that—we can talk about it later. Let’s go back to the corridor. Did you pass anyone else?”
Once again, Dolly screwed up her face to think. “There was a woman—large and not too tall. We had to turn sideways to pass each other in the corridor.”
“What did she look like?”
“Not handsome,” said Dolly censoriously. “She would have done far better to put a little paint on her face. But those were the type that George attracted. Ugly, wealthy women enamored with the hero of the opera. I assumed she was going to his dressing room.”
“Oh dear,” said Edwina. Somehow, she had only imagined men of her class conducting lewd assignations with the thespians. It had never occurred to her that women might do such a thing too. “Had you seen her before?”
“No, and I barely saw her then. She had the hood of her cloak low on her brow.”
“Did you pass anyone else?”
“Not that I can remember.”
Edwina rose from the table. “One last thing, Dolly. The necklace was part of a set with a tiara, earbobs, and bracelets. Where are the other pieces?”
“I’ve got them safe,” said Dolly. She gave a quick glance at her low decolletage.
“Ah,” said Edwina, understanding just where they had been placed for safe keeping. She had done the same thing with the necklace when Mr. Pevensey wasn’t looking. “We’ll need those from you later. But right now, we need to find a place for you to stay tonight.”
“I don’t want to go to prison!” cried Dolly, jumping up from her chair in a fright. “I didn’t steal them. She would have wanted me to have them.”
“You won’t go to prison,” said Edwina gently. “In fact, I think the best thing to do would be to bring you home with me to Baker Street.”
“Mr. Pevensey to see Miss Cecil,” announced Polly.
“Again.” Clearly, she was curious as to the relationship between two people of such disparate status.
Edwina, who had just deposited a disoriented Dolly in the parlor with Helena, told the maid to send Mr. Pevensey into the dining room.
It was the only place left to speak with him privately since the Baker Street house was too small to have two separate parlors.
“Please, take a seat,” said Edwina, gesturing to the dining table as she entered the room.
Mr. Pevensey pulled out a chair for her and then settled into the adjacent chair with a sigh of satisfaction.
“I thought I’d never lose Tibbs. I finally sent him on a scouting mission to every apothecary shop in London to see if anyone bought anything with cyanide in it within three days of the murder. ”
“Clever,” said Edwina. “That will keep him busy today and tomorrow at least. Were you able to interview the nurserymaid?”
“More or less,” said Mr. Pevensey, summarizing the details that he discovered.
“And I also visited the coroner on the way here. He said the medicine I found in Ralph Aldine’s flat was harmless.
It would barely help a cough, let alone stop someone from breathing.
” He looked at her with curious eyes. “They told me at Bow Street that you brought Dolly back here?”
“Yes, I didn’t want her to bolt again, for I know she’ll be needed at the trial. She’s still on edge, for she’s afraid she’ll be charged with theft.” She told the detective the statements that Dolly had made, omitting nothing even if the revelations made little sense to her.
“So,” said Mr. Pevensey slowly, “it seems to me that we’ve confirmed that Ralph Aldine is not the man in Libby’s dressing room, and in fact, the only evidence that it was him was his calling card—left there earlier in the day—and Dolly’s claim to have seen him enter.
That claim has since been debunked as a lie as she did not see him enter.
She only supposed it was him since Libby asked her through the crack of the door to bring ‘the letter.’”
“And the letter,” continued Edwina, “could have referred to either of the versions, depending on who Libby was trying to blackmail.”
“The two other people with motive and means for murder would be Lord Fremont and Lady Fremont. If it was Lord Fremont in the room, perhaps he was demanding the letter to destroy it. If it was Lady Fremont in the room, perhaps she was demanding to see the letter as proof of her husband’s infidelity. ”
“I doubt that it was Lady Fremont in the room,” said Edwina, “for Dolly said she heard a man’s voice.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Pevensey, carefully, “but Dolly has not been the most reliable witness up until this point. The poison Libby drank seems more likely to have been administered by Lady Fremont than her husband. She was the one who had the knowledge and the possession of the poison.”
“Does a man not have access to his wife’s still room?
” asked Edwina, taking the counterpoint to Mr. Pevensey’s own thoughts.
“If Lady Fremont really prosed on about her remedies as much as the nursemaid said she did, then surely Lord Fremont would know where to procure a poison.” Edwina looked at Pevensey for approval of this theory, but his freckled face was inscrutable.
“Dolly also said that she passed a woman in the corridor after she found Libby dead, so if that woman was Lady Fremont, she could not have administered the poison.”
“But again, we put too much trust in Dolly’s testimony.”
“But what else can we rely on?”
Mr. Pevensey withdrew his notebook from his pocket and began to flip through the pages of drawings. “Whom have we forgotten?”
Edwina leaned forward and pointed to the page opposite the sketch of the jewelry. There sat a sketch of an imperious woman with brown hair, brown eyes, and a good figure, but whose face was void of recognizable features. “Who is that?”
Mr. Pevensey tapped the drawing with his forefinger. “That is the woman who came to Rundell and Bridge, asking about Lord Fremont’s purchases there.”
“One would expect a suspicious wife to be the person to do such a thing.”
“Yes, but one would hardly say that Lady Fremont has a ‘good figure’” said Pevensey, “or, at least, Mrs. Covington from Rundell and Bridge would not.”
“Then it must be Anthea Wedgwood,” said Edwina promptly.
“Why her?”
“Who else would be sent by a jealous wife but her own sister? Depend upon it, Lady Fremont received a letter from Libby Clifford in Dolly’s hand informing her that her husband had sired an illegitimate child and asking for money to stay quiet.
Lady Fremont, who might have been suspicious of her husband’s behavior for some time, then remembered the pink topaz parure had been missing from the safe and asked Lord Fremont about it.
If he did have a mistress, perhaps he was plundering the family jewels to pay for her services.
I imagine Lord Fremont gave some excuse such as sending it out to Rundell and Bridge to be cleaned.
Lady Fremont then sent her sister to confirm whether this was true.
Mrs. Covington revealed that Lord Fremont had indeed refurbished the necklace and bought another with an emerald. ”
“Brava!” said Mr. Pevensey. “Don’t stop now.”
“Miss Wedgwood brought the news home to her sister, who had most certainly not received any emerald necklace from her husband. Armed with her sister’s information and the letter from the King’s Theatre, Lady Fremont confronted her husband in a rage—anxious both for herself, for her children, and for the reputation that she was so carefully helping her husband cultivate in Parliament. ”
“Many of the peers in Parliament have mistresses and bastards aplenty,” objected Mr. Pevensey.
“But not those alliances that Lord Fremont was trying to cultivate, those concerned with social reform.”
“Very well,” said Mr. Pevensey, putting his hands behind his head and leaning back a little in the chair. “I’ll allow that assumption. What next, Miss Cecil?”
“Why, next, Lord Fremont declares that he will ‘take care of it.’ He goes to his wife’s still room and obtains a bottle of tincture of laurel, knowing that in its concentrated form it is poison.
The next day he attends the opera and, afterwards, pays one of his usual visits to Miss Clifford backstage.
But instead of proceeding with their normal activities, he bids her give back all of his letters and anything that could tie him to her.
I supposed he might have asked for the jewelry too.
She doesn’t have his letter—the one admitting he is father to the unborn child—and she is loath to give back the jewelry since it’s the only valuable thing she owns.
Frightened by his harsh tone, she hears Dolly at the door and tells her to fetch the letter as quickly as she can. ”
“Why then does Lord Fremont not wait for Dolly to come back?”
“Because he knows that, even more than the letter, Libby Clifford’s existence is the source of all the scandal he is determined to avoid.
And he is angry. Very angry that she dared to send his wife a letter revealing his secrets.
He removes the flask from his pocket and pours it into a glass, bidding Libby drink it.
She refuses. He insists. On the table is a dagger—gilded like a stage prop, but very real indeed.
He seizes it and places it against her throat. ”
“The pinprick wound that the coroner mentioned,” said Mr. Pevensey approvingly.
“Unaware the drink is deadly, she takes the glass of cyanide and downs it. The poison works fast in such a large dose. Slowly, her head starts to droop. As her eyes become glassy, Lord Fremont lays the dagger back onto the dressing table and leaves the room. He knows Dolly is returning soon and does not wait to retrieve the letter or the jewelry. He slips out of the theater, avoiding Dolly by hiding in a corner and just barely missing crossing paths with his own wife.”
“Ah, the infuriated Lady Fremont makes her appearance.”
“She has never been to the back rooms at the King’s Theatre before, but she knows that Miss Clifford’s room has a flower painted on the door.
Everyone has heard of the lovely opera singer who is the Rose of the World.
She finds the flower, the door is ajar, and she enters.
Miss Clifford, seemingly exhausted from her performance, sits slumped in the chair in front of her dressing table, her long-lashed eyes closed in repose.
Lady Fremont went there to reason with her, to remonstrate with her, to rebuke her, but she sees the Cyprian sitting in her dressing gown, still so charmingly beautiful despite her swelling middle.
Their faces, so differently featured, are reflected side by side in the mirror on the dressing table, and her jealousy increases.
A gilded dagger sits on the dressing table.
In a fit of madness, Lady Fremont seizes the dagger and plunges it into the heart of the sleeping seductress. ”
Mr. Pevensey’s eyebrows lifted at the intensity of her words. She did not think the violence itself had startled him but the fact that the description had come from her own lips.
“Dismayed by what she has done, she leaves the room immediately, slinking home from the theater in fear that she will be recognized. Her husband is safe from exposure, but she has risked her soul to achieve it.” Edwina paused, trying to decipher the look on Mr. Pevensey’s face. “What do you think?” she asked proudly.
“I think, Miss Cecil, that you are a very fine storyteller, but I also think that unless the miracle of confession occurs, this story will be impossible to prove.”