Chapter Eight
Solomon and Constance alighted from the carriage in the mews, which were only just stirring with yawning grooms and the sounds of horses stamping for their breakfast, and entered the garden from the back gate.
As they approached the house, Solomon could hear the distinctive sweeping of Jeremy’s broom at the front.
“There should be someone up and making tea,” Constance said cheerfully, marching toward the back door. The smell of horses seemed to be following them, which was odd. Until Constance halted so suddenly that Solomon walked into her and flung his arm around her to steady her.
“Give a man some warning,” he said lightly.
She ignored that, raising her hand to point at the back doorstep. “Look.”
A large pile of horse manure steamed gently on its plinth.
“What the…?”
“Horses don’t jump into gardens, reverse up to doors, and lift their tails,” Constance said in a small, hard voice. “This is deliberate nastiness. Jeremy!”
As the big lad came running to answer her call, Solomon looked for footprints on the path or the garden, anything to give a clue. As with the appearance of the bodies, there didn’t seem to be any. It was a pity it had not rained in days.
Uneasily, Solomon looked over at the houses on either side. There could be no doubt that this was malicious. Had someone got the idea of leaving unpleasant gifts for an unwanted neighbor from Tuesday morning’s discovery? Or was it the same black-humored joker?
“I’ll get a bucket and shovel, ma’am,” Jeremy said, subdued. “Won’t take a moment.”
Tight-lipped, Constance watched him.
Solomon took her hand. She had never expected to be liked or welcomed here. She had never been na?ve. But this deliberate nastiness with its implied accusation of “Filth!” delivered in secret after the shock of Tuesday’s discovery…
It angered Solomon. Clearly, it had shaken Constance, and would do long after all physical signs of the outrage had gone. She clung to his fingers and took a deep breath.
“So much for civilized neighborhoods. I suppose you saw or heard no sign of the delivery, Jeremy?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Reckon it was before light.”
“Maybe,” Solomon said as another possibility struck him, “it’s supposed to be a warning to us to stop asking questions.”
Constance shook her head. “Even if we do stop, the police won’t. They might if it was just Nevvy. But for St. John?”
“Respectable families don’t want the police poking around,” Solomon reminded her. “I doubt they want us either.”
“A pity when they’ve just got my attention.
” Her voice was still hard, and for the first time he caught that hint of ruthlessness that had helped her build her business from nothing, besting rivals and enemies alike to reach her goal.
This establishment was her achievement, her life’s work, her pride.
And she, who called herself all sorts of names without illusion, was insulted. And frightened.
“It’s trivial,” Solomon insisted. “Now, let’s have a cup of tea inside and concentrate on the reasons we came. Jeremy, how thoroughly did the police search the garden the morning the bodies were found? Could they have missed a bottle, for example?”
Jeremy, filling a fresh bucket from the pump under the window, spoke over his shoulder.
“I don’t know. I didn’t watch them. But I never found no bottles hiding under bushes, nor in the potting shed, nor the wood shed, neither.
” He carried his bucket to the step, threw the water over it, and brushed it clear before indicating they could now pass cleanly to the back door and tea.
*
Constance didn’t want to admit how shaken she was by what looked like a silly schoolboy prank.
She wasn’t quite sure what upset her so, whether coming so soon and in the same place as the bodies made it disrespectful, or whether it was simply the idea of someone actively hating her enough to do this.
She was used to being disapproved of. In many ways, she even gloried in it. But hate was different.
However, after a few minutes with Solomon in the familiar surroundings of the kitchen, she was ready to face the garden again, and they took their tea outside.
“Would drunks bother to hide their evidence?” Solomon asked. “Aren’t they more likely to just abandon it or toss it to one side, out of the way?”
Constance sat down on the clean, drying doorstep and made throwing motions with her right arm, at first straight ahead in the direction of the herb garden, which Jeremy tended religiously, and the little lawn beyond.
Then she tossed her imaginary bottle to the right and suspected it would have broken on the path or rolled into the wall. She tried to the left.
At best, it would probably have hit the potting shed door and probably broken on the path or…
Jeremy leaned his broom against the wall. “Sometimes things get stuck under the shed,” he said, ambling toward it.
The shed was on a stone plinth but built to overhang it by several inches. Jeremy crouched down, peering into the space.
“It’s not a bottle,” he reported, much to Constance’s disappointment.
But he stretched flat on the stone and thrust his hand under the shed. Constance and Solomon were on either side of him when he bounced back up and revealed his discovery.
Not a bottle, but a gentleman’s leather-and-silver pocket flask.
For a second, all three of them stared at it.
“Oh, well done, Jeremy,” Constance breathed, and the gardener shook a couple of insects off it and held it out toward them with distinct unease.
Solomon took it, checked the stopper was in place, and gave it a little shake. It seemed to be empty. He took out the stopper and sniffed it, then jerked his head back almost immediately, grimacing.
“Opium,” he said, holding the stopper out to Constance.
She smelled it too, stale, but still distinctive, invoking distant memories from childhood that she hadn’t understood at the time, and more recent ones of sickbeds and lost friends.
Solomon replaced the stopper. “Well, that’s how he took the opium.” He dusted some dirt and a clinging leaf from the flask and turned it over. “Smells like laudanum, only more intense. Definitely St. John’s, I’d say.” The engraved initials were clear enough: TSJ.
“Not new,” Constance observed, touching the old scratches and the worn patches of leather. She glanced back at the step. “If he’d thrown this away, would it have slid under the shed like that? Or did he put it there deliberately?”
“Why would he do that?” Solomon asked.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. To hide his identity? Conceal the opium? Perhaps Nevvy hid it, because the opium was his and he was afraid of a murder charge.”
“And then sat back down beside St. John and inconveniently died? Wouldn’t he have bolted to separate himself from the crime?”
“He was in no condition to bolt. The miracle seems to be that he made it this far. There’s something going on here we don’t understand.”
“A good deal,” Solomon agreed. “If they were having a jolly, foul-tasting drink together, how and why, and by whom, were the bodies shifted into the odd positions you found them in? If they were moved here by someone else, who?”
“And why?”
Solomon wrapped the flask in his very white handkerchief and pocketed it. “I suppose I should take this to Inspector Harris.”
“He’ll scold his men for not finding it.”
“And so he should,” Solomon said austerely, allowing her one of those rare glimpses into his life as a successful man who expected the best of all his employees. “But first, we need to meet Cordell at the office.”
“We can take Janey and Hat with us…”
*
Hanibal Cordell presented himself at the Silver and Grey offices punctually at nine o’clock. The rather endearing uncertainty he had betrayed at the establishment last night had vanished and he was once again the self-possessed, almost arrogant young man of birth, wealth, and privilege.
Janey, showing Hat how it was done, announced the visitor to Solomon and Constance almost as soon as they had sat down for a cup of tea. Fortunately, Janey had thought to supply a third cup, so there was no need of interruptions once they were all seated around Solomon’s impressive desk.
“Pleasant office,” Cordell remarked. “It speaks of both comfort and efficiency.”
“That was our aim,” Solomon said. “The details are Constance’s.
Our usual contract, with our fees outlined, is in front of you—if you still wish to engage us.
In full honesty, I have to tell you that while we treat private matters with unswerving confidentiality, we will never conceal crimes, whoever has committed them.
So you must consider that before you sign the document. ”
The man’s gaze had been on Constance. He had looked a lot last night, too. Solomon didn’t blame him for that. Nor did it necessarily betoken a hidden agenda. But as his eyes met Solomon’s, they were definitely thoughtful.
“I think,” Cordell said slowly, “you would have gone on investigating without my engaging your services. I am not trying to buy your results, merely to ensure you don’t give up in favor of some more pressing case. I need to know what happened to St. John, and so does Bella.”
“Does Bella know you are employing us in the matter?” Constance asked.
“Not yet,” Cordell said steadily, “but I shall tell her.”
“And will you tell her who we are? Who I am?”
“That you own the house where he was found? Yes, probably. She doesn’t know what the property is.”
“Won’t she want to meet us?” Constance asked curiously. “Will you allow that?”
Cordell hesitated, but only for an instant. “If you had asked me before last night, I would have said no. Now…I will not take her to that house, but I have no objections to your meeting.”
It irked Solomon that the world did not accept her. It irked him more that he had once regarded her in a similar light. Fascinating perhaps, desirable most certainly, but not for Polite Society.