Chapter Three #2
“I like it,” David said unexpectedly. “It’s part of your life now, yours and hers. I’m glad to see you so…comfortable together.”
Sipping their port, they lapsed into silence. Then David said abruptly, “I thought I might go back to sea.”
Immediately, as though a switch had been thrown, Solomon felt the stab of loss. But he had almost expected it. David, clearly, had itchy feet. He wasn’t used to staying in one place.
“We’ll miss you,” Solomon said. Then, recognizing that for the evasion it was, he added in a rush, “I will miss you. You won’t vanish again, will you?”
A smile flickered. “No. No, I won’t do that.”
“When will you go?” It felt as if David were already on his way out the door.
“Oh, I don’t know. I was just thinking about it.”
“Do you ever think about going back to Jamaica?”
“No,” David said. “Do you?”
“It crosses my mind. Less so recently. I suppose I have roots here now.”
David met his gaze. “They are good roots,” he said earnestly.
The trouble was, they weren’t David’s.
*
In the drawing room, Juliet stretched her legs out comfortably, and Constance pushed a footstool beneath her feet.
“You’re a good girl, Connie,” her mother said. “And that was a dashed fine meal. Note my moderate language.”
“I do, and it was. In just a little, I want Bibby to come and assist our cook here, to learn more from her. Frees up another place at the establishment.”
Juliet eyed her. “I told himself once you would leave the establishment to be with him. But you won’t, will you?”
“He doesn’t even want me to anymore. He is trying a different tack—trying to make me and the establishment respectable. We get very generous charitable donations now, you know.”
“Clever,” Juliet drawled, “but they’ll throw away the key if they sniff one hint of embezzlement.”
“There is none. I’m very careful to keep the donations very separate.”
“From the immoral earnings? Can’t you give up that part altogether? It’ll never be respectable, Constance, and he deserves that.”
“I know what he deserves,” Constance said, turning away, “and it isn’t me. However, it’s me he wants and has to live with.”
“You’ve given lots of people a chance, Connie, a good chance. It’s time to step away. Be his wife, not a madam or an investigator.”
“I intend to be all three. And really, Juliet, are you in any position to lecture me?”
“No. I suppose I forfeited that a long time ago. But I’m pulling myself back up, Con, and I don’t want you to lose the chances you’ve won.”
Constance hadn’t been going to bring it up, but she did, partly in retaliation, partly because she was curious to know the sides of her mother that Juliet had always kept hidden. “You fell a long way, didn’t you?”
Juliet was silent. Then, “I never wanted that life for you.”
Constance waved her arm, encompassing the whole house. “And I don’t have it, so you were successful. I earned all this—but it’s what you fell from, isn’t it?”
“Don’t be daft.” Juliet’s Cockney accent was more pronounced now.
“You could read and write.”
“Went to a ragged school, didn’t I? So did you, when I took you there myself, only you wouldn’t stay put.”
“I could already read and write because you taught me. You were a lady’s companion.”
Her lip curled. “Seb Kellar tell you that? He was always a fantasist. What’s he doing in Italy, anyway?”
“He’s a diplomat of some kind.”
Juliet sniffed. “What ails the twin?”
Constance thought about pursuing the matter—there was a lot more she wanted to know. But it was Juliet’s life and she owed her acceptance. So she allowed the change of subject. “Nothing. He just isn’t used to family. You know they were separated for twenty years.”
“And here they are.”
Whatever had been discussed in the dining room, David seemed to have mellowed, and became much more part of the conversation. It turned out to be a surprisingly pleasant evening, and for Constance, it was followed by a particularly delicious night and morning with Solomon.
*
It was only when she rose to dress for the day that Constance again remembered the bodies on her doorstep.
“Harris is right,” she said abruptly. “Why my doorstep?”
“Bad luck, probably,” Solomon said, kissing the back of her neck in passing.
“Not someone playing a cruel trick on the immoral women of my establishment?”
“It’s possible, of course, but murdering someone, let alone murdering two people, is going rather beyond a trick on an unwanted neighbor.”
“Whoever put them there needn’t have murdered them,” Constance argued. “Just found the bodies and moved them to my property.”
“And stuck a knife in one of them,” Solomon reminded her. “Then it’s hard work moving bodies. Besides, if there’s one thing more likely than a discreet brothel to lower the tone of the neighborhood, it’s murder, dead bodies, and the swarming of police with awkward questions.”
“Fair points,” Constance allowed. “I shall call in at the establishment first, in the hope of finding Inspector Harris there, and hope nothing else has happened. I’ll join you at Silver and Grey afterward.”
Much to her relief, she discovered the much more usual good-natured organized chaos reigning in the establishment.
Janey had already left for work and the domestic staff were clearing up after last night’s soiree.
Apparently it had been a pleasant and successful night and Sarah was counting the takings.
“Peeler in the kitchen, though,” Max told her from his precarious perch on the ladder from where he was cleaning the hall chandelier. “Hoping to speak to you, I believe.”
“Which peeler?” Constance asked warily.
“Peeler-in-chief—Harris?”
“Well, that’s fine.” Constance decided to go down to the kitchen instead of summoning him, and discovered the inspector on the point of departure.
“I’d given up on you,” he said mildly.
“Let’s talk in the garden,” Constance suggested. “Bibby will bring us a cup of tea.”
“So I will, ma’am!” Bibby said cheerfully, and Constance led the policeman outside to the bench where she occasionally sat to take the air and appreciate what she had.
“So what have you learned?” she asked him, sitting down on the bench by the small lawn and gesturing for him to sit beside her.
Harris sat, turning his face up to the sunshine. “Our corpses have names. Terrence St. John, as we suspected—his wife identified him yesterday afternoon—and a vagrant known as Nevvy, real name apparently Gareth Neville, according to St. Peter’s Hospital.”
“St. Peter’s?” Constance pounced. “Isn’t that one of St. John’s charities? Did they meet there, then?”
“We don’t know that, though Nevvy was, apparently, a patient there. He was in the final stages of consumption. No one is surprised he expired.”
“And St. John?” Constance asked.
“Ah, well, that is more interesting. There was a quantity of opium in his stomach. Enough to kill him.”
“Was there indeed?” she murmured. Her voice, her whole person, felt suddenly shaky. She had considerable sympathy for anyone facing the misery of poisoning, let alone dying of it. In her mind, everything sped closer, became more personal. “How very… Why stab him, then?”
Harris scowled. “Presumably in the hope that no autopsy would then be considered necessary. But I pressed for one anyway. You were right—he was already dead when he was stabbed. He died of the opium poisoning.”
“He ate at home,” Constance pointed out.
“And no one else was ill in his household. They all ate the same things.”
“Who served them?”
Harris’s lips twitched. “The family served themselves from the same serving dishes. There’s certainly a bottle of laudanum in the St. Johns’ stillroom, but I don’t see how it could have got into only Mr. St. John’s dinner.”
“Did they all drink the wine?” she asked.
“The family all did, and even the butler quaffed the dregs before bed. None of them noticed a peculiar taste to it. Are you afraid I didn’t ask the right questions?”
Constance smiled. “Sorry. I’m thinking aloud. I suppose we can’t know how St. John’s notecase got into Nevvy’s pocket?”
“I guess a charitable man might have given it to pay for his hospital treatment.”
“Why give him the wallet as well as the money?” She shook her head. “Whoever did this does not think highly of the police. You’re meant to think that Nevvy stabbed St. John to rob him, and not realize he was poisoned. But even that’s too simple, isn’t it?”
Harris’s face remained expressionless. “Why do you say that?”
“Because I have seen people die of consumption. I don’t see how he could have got here from wherever he sheltered, let alone had the energy to stab anyone.”
He was not remotely surprised. “How well do you know your neighbors, Mrs. Grey?”
“We keep ourselves to ourselves, inspector,” she said dryly. “The ladies don’t leave cards here.”
“Your people tell me there has been no trouble, no threats or quarrels with your neighbors.”
So he too wondered if the placement of the bodies was a malicious trick. “There never has been. Our existence here has always been discreet, a presence no one acknowledges. But you know that.”
“Then your own people would not conceal a recent quarrel from you? If there was trouble during your absence?”
“No,” she said firmly. And yet it was something she hadn’t thought of. In the warmth of the morning sun, she suddenly felt cold.