Chapter Twelve
Constance could not wait to get back to the office to read the purloined letter, so she dragged it out of her reticule as soon as the carriage began to move.
“There was no time,” she said without looking up, though she felt Solomon’s gaze upon her. “Here,” she added, holding out Veronique’s bills to him. “What do you make of these?”
The letter was dated in the autumn of the previous year and came from someone called George Lorimer, who appeared, from the lack of formality, to be an old friend and neighbor in the county of Berkshire.
Most of it was homely news about his family and an amusing tale about the village innkeeper.
The name Neville was only mentioned once, and as if in answer to a query previously sent by St. John.
It wasn’t all she had hoped for, but it was better than nothing, so she read it aloud.
“Sadly, I have heard nothing of Neville for over fifteen years, but do let me know when you find the old reprobate. When do you come down to the country next? We all look forward to seeing you and the family. Ever your friend, George Lorimer.”
She looked up to meet Solomon’s interested gaze. “So he did know Nevvy!”
“If it’s the same Neville, which does not seem terribly likely on the face of it. It’s a common enough name.”
“Worth investigating, though,” she said, slightly deflated.
“Absolutely,” he agreed, and flapped Veronique’s invoice between his fingers. “What am I looking for in this? It looks like daylight robbery, but presumably the St. Johns agreed to it, since it’s been paid.”
“What are all these sundries? A few gloves and reticules should not cost as much as one already ridiculously expensive evening gown. And all Veronique’s bills are like that, so it’s not just a one-time payment for all the hats and gloves in Bella’s trousseau.”
“Are they indeed?” Solomon stared at it again. “Do you go to fashionable dressmakers like this Veronique?”
“No.” She sighed. “I have my own woman who is not remotely fashionable, but she is very good at following my ideas and does excellent work. But you’re right, I don’t know what the wealthiest expect to pay.
The dressmakers I spoke to yesterday, including Veronique herself, certainly threw around eye-watering prices in my hearing, but nothing like this.
We need to speak to a wealthy aristocrat… ”
“And Bella,” Solomon said. “We need to be sure before we start accusing someone of blackmail, but if it’s true, it’s a clever way of doing it without leaving any evidence. At worst, Veronique has overcharged, which is hardly a crime.”
“She could have been blackmailing any of them,” Constance said excitedly. “Most men just seem to wince and pay the bills. This was a special occasion, and we know St. John was happy to indulge his daughter. What if he was killed to stop him going to the police about Veronique?”
“Veronique herself?” Solomon said consideringly. “Or…surely St. John’s own family could not have done it simply to avoid the possibility of scandal coming out?”
“You’d be surprised the lengths people will go to in order to remain outwardly respectable.
Though, to be frank, I can’t imagine what Bella could have done in her short and sheltered life that would be worthy of blackmail.
She doesn’t seem the type to seduce the footman or try to elope with the stable boy. ”
“Some affair of her mother’s?” Solomon suggested dubiously.
“And she poisoned her husband to prevent him from finding out? Or from revealing the whole thing to the police?”
Solomon passed the account back to Constance. “Veronique would not murder her funding source, so I doubt she killed St. John.”
“But even a visit from the police could badly affect her business. She depends on her reputation and the goodwill of Society’s powerful patrons.”
“Wouldn’t cutting out the blackmail have pacified St. John enough? Why risk murdering him?”
“I don’t know,” Constance admitted. “But we need to find out where Veronique was on the night St. John died.”
Solomon nodded. He was silent for the rest of the journey to the office until, just as the carriage was pulling up, he said, “It’s not right yet. Why stab him when he’s already dead?”
“To cast the blame on Nevvy,” Constance said, gathering up her bags.
“Why was Nevvy even there? Who is Nevvy, and what has any of it to do with this morning’s corpse and the other attempts to intimidate you?”
“We haven’t solved it yet,” Constance said defensively, “but at last we have some kind of motive and a few more paths to look into.”
Solomon alighted and handed her down. “We have something important,” he agreed, “and it’s just as well you spotted these things. We’ll discover how they all fit together.”
His praise and his optimism still warmed her ridiculously, and her own slightly flattened spirits lifted again. In the office, a burst of hilarity emerged from Janey’s preserve at the back, but both she and Hat stuck their heads out of the office to greet their employers.
“Conference, Janey,” Constance called, and the three of them trooped into Solomon’s office. “How is Hat getting along with everything?”
“I wouldn’t have picked her out, to be honest,” Janey said. “But she’s bright and got the hang of it without a problem. She’s even stopped being scared to answer the door. She’ll do.”
“Good.” Solomon took the case notes from his desk and passed them to Constance, who had always been the chief keeper of their lists. “We need to go over every aspect of this case together and decide on our next steps.”
They started at the beginning with the discovery of the body, and Constance added to the notes as they went along, particularly Janey’s full impressions of the Willow household.
“Can you really see the old ladies physically bringing bodies to our door?” Constance asked. “Without help? Would they really soil their hands in person?”
“I can see them wanting to,” Janey said. “Even ordering it.”
“And who would obey them?” Solomon asked. “What of the menservants? Are they brawny fellows?”
“One of the stable lads is. It was him I first spoke to, but he seems too amiable to do anything so awful—even the manure incident.”
Constance felt her lips twitch at the almost primly spoken manure. Not so long ago Janey would have called it something much earthier, and Janey’s quick grin at her confirmed she was well aware of it.
“Well done,” Constance murmured. “So, you don’t think he could be made to do such things?”
Janey considered. “Maybe. His job depends on his obedience, after all. But I don’t think he did do it.
Not the two bodies, anyway. He wasn’t in the least embarrassed to talk about it.
None of them were, not even the housekeeper, Mrs. Robertson.
She paid lip service to us being unfit subjects of conversation, but it was clear she was as interested as everyone else. No one was looking furtive.”
Constance made a note in the Willow column.
“So before your visit to the house, we already had the two bodies and the manure,” she said.
“After, we had the note on the gate, and the other body. It could all be part of the same campaign to drive us out, and yet nothing to do with the actual deaths of either St. John or Nevvy. What if the bodies died in the Willow house or outside it? What if Mrs. Willow and her sister poisoned St. John?”
“Why?” Solomon asked blankly. “No one disliked him.”
“What if they knew whatever it was Veronique did? And, instead of blackmail, resorted to murder? Being overly self-righteous, from what Janey says, they’d have to be mad as hatters, of course…”
Solomon and Janey looked thoughtful, but Constance sighed.
“We still have the difficulty of removing the bodies to our doorstep without leaving a sign,” she said ruefully. “And Janey’s seeing no guilt among the servants who might have done the moving. Besides the fact that we don’t even know if Veronique was blackmailing St. John. Moving on…”
By the end, they had a list of fresh inquiries. Janey was sent to discover what she could about Veronique.
“Especially what she was doing on the night St. John died,” Solomon said. “Try making friends with her assistant and discover their relationships with other customers. If she was blackmailing one of the St. Johns, she could have been doing the same to others. Take Lenny with you if he’s free.”
“He’s busy nearly every day now,” Janey said proudly. “But I’ll see if he can spare an hour or two. What are you going to do?”
“Call on a duke’s daughter,” Solomon said, “and learn what we can about the St. Johns, and about Mrs. Willow and her sister.”
“And the price of aristocratic weddings,” Constance added. “This evening, we’ll be at Zenobia Paul’s gathering, where we’re hoping to learn if the Neville in St. John’s letter is our Nevvy, and if so, what the connection is.”
Janey nodded at the pile of letters on Solomon’s desk. “You’ve got them to answer too,” she said somewhat smugly, and swaggered off to fetch her hat.
*
In the end, since they hadn’t thought of calling on duke’s daughter Lady Grizelda Tizsa while they were actually in Mayfair, Constance and Solomon went home to change and eat a quick dinner first.
They found the Tizsas enjoying a quiet moment in their little house in Half Moon Street Lane. Their offspring had just been put to bed, and they welcomed Constance and Solomon with flattering delight.
“You look very smart,” Lady Griz said when they were all seated in the pleasant study-cum-drawing room. “I can’t imagine it is for our benefit.”
“Am I overdressed?” Constance asked ruefully. “We’ve been invited to an evening party at Miss Zenobia Paul’s.”
“Oh, then you are perfectly dressed. Everyone is.”
“You know her?” Solomon asked quickly.
“No,” said Dragan Tizsa, one-time revolutionary in his home country of Hungary, and now doctor and refugee—and son-in-law to the Duke of Kelburn.