Chapter Nine
I t was perhaps fortunate that when Solomon woke the following morning, Constance was sound asleep at the opposite side of the bed.
He had dreamed she was lying cuddled into his shoulder, which had both touched and aroused him. Even asleep, he had known those were dangerous emotions around Constance Silver. And yet this morning, he did not bolt out of bed to escape temptation. He lay still beside her and found he rather liked the strange companionship.
After a long moment, he turned over to see if she was awake, propping his head on his hand.
God, she was beautiful.
In sleep, without any artifice or humor or hiding, she moved him in quite unexpected ways. But that wasn’t why his heartbeat quickened. Beneath his hand, the bed was warm.
She really had been curled close against him. The memory of the dream intensified again. He wondered what it would be like to have her there every morning.
Oh yes, it was time to get up.
He turned once more and eased himself out of bed and into his trousers. As he padded toward the washstand, a soft knock sounded at the door. He opened it to discover a smiling maid with a tray of coffee.
“Good morning, sir. Coffee for Mrs. Grey, as promised, and for yourself in case you want it.”
“Thank you,” he said, taking the tray from her and kicking the door shut. He must look ridiculous with his nightshirt half caught up in his trousers.
When he turned back, Constance was awake and watching him with laughing eyes.
“Very fetching,” she commented.
“I aim to please. Allow me to pour your coffee.”
As she sat up against the pillows to receive her cup, she was damnably alluring in that ridiculous, frothy garment she called a nightgown, with her slightly tousled hair and rosy morning skin. Despite their late night, she looked well rested and eager—to proceed with their investigation. Obviously.
“Do you think John really will send the maid over this morning?” she said, and sipped her coffee with a sigh of pure bliss.
Solomon took the other cup and decided to ignore his comical appearance by lounging at the foot of the bed, his back against the bottom post. “I hope so. Otherwise we’ll have to sneak into the Fairfield kitchen, and I’m not sure how that will be regarded.”
“What of the letter?” she asked with obvious reluctance. “About the child and the adoption. Do you think I should show it to Elizabeth?”
“Would she want to know?”
“She didn’t when she gave the baby up. She needed only to be sure he had gone to a kind and safe home, but no more. It was too painful. She was afraid of going there just to see him. She insisted a clean break was best for the child, and the only way she could go on. But things might be different now.”
Solomon took a considering mouthful of coffee. “May I see the letter again?”
She opened the drawer in her bedside table and passed the folded letter to him. He read it more carefully this time.
“Who is this L. Dunne? Is he even trustworthy?” she wondered aloud.
“Yes. I have used them myself. They are a branch of a trusted firm of solicitors that specializes in investigations. What worries me about this is the fact that they are giving confidential information to someone with no right to it.”
“Perhaps the Nialls are their clients. I’m sure Elizabeth is not.”
“Sir Humphrey might be. No, something is wrong with this. I don’t know the signature here—it clearly belongs to none of the Dunnes themselves. It must be one of their employees.”
“Giving away information he shouldn’t?” Constance frowned. “For money? Or favors? I suppose it fits with what we suspect of Frances—she can get around anyone, one way or another. Only…she didn’t use this information, did she? She told Sir Humphrey that Elizabeth was a Covent Garden whore, and she told Elizabeth that she, Frances, was carrying Humphrey’s child, a clear lie. Why did she not use the truth of the illegitimate child to cause trouble?”
“Perhaps she guessed Sir Humphrey already knew about it.”
“How?” Solomon asked.
Constance sighed and drank more coffee. “I don’t know.”
Solomon folded the letter and tapped it thoughtfully against his thigh. “I think perhaps I should bolt up to London and see the Dunnes.”
Was that a flicker of disappointment in her eyes?
“Instead of seeing the maid?”
“ After seeing the maid. She must know more than anyone about Frances.” He drained his cup and rose to his feet. “You’ll forgive me if I wash and dress?”
“I rather like the nightshirt, but do what you must. I shall preserve my maidenly modestly by studiously reading this book.”
*
Sir Humphrey provided Solomon with a railway timetable, and he discovered there was a train to London just before midday. He might just be in time to catch the Dunnes’ office, although he would have to stay the night in Town.
Providing the maid, Bingham, didn’t solve the whole mystery.
If she turned up.
But John was as good as his word, for they had just risen from breakfast when the butler informed Constance that the girl awaited her in the kitchen.
Elizabeth, who overheard, looked startled. “Do you want me to come?” she asked, looking from Constance to Solomon and back. “Use the morning room to see her if you wish.”
“I’d rather talk to her where she’s more comfortable,” Constance said. “And no, you don’t need to come. You should go and talk to your husband.”
That was rather pointed. There was a definite atmosphere of tension between the Maules, relaxing only when the children were present.
Together, Solomon and Constance went down to the kitchen. Bingham, seated very straight at the kitchen table consuming a cup of tea, looked both nervous and defiant. The Willows servants were clearly curious, as though they suspected her of applying for a position with Constance.
For a moment, Constance contemplated a well-spoken, obedient maid, and realized she would miss Janey, if or when the girl ever moved on to a more respectable mistress.
“May we use your sitting room?” she asked the housekeeper pleasantly.
“Of course, madam.” Mrs. Haslett even showed them inside and closed the door without as much as a sniff of criticism.
“We’re sorry to drag you over here to talk,” Constance began. “But we thought it might be easier without the other servants or the family at the Grange interrupting.”
“That’s what Mr. John said, and I don’t mind. There’s nothing to do back there anyway, since they won’t let me box up Miss Frances’s clothes and things. I’m serving out my notice doing nothing but writing to apply for new positions.”
“I can imagine it must be difficult for you. Sit down. Did Mr. Niall tell you that we really need you to be honest with us? Not that I believe you have been dis honest previously,” Constance added hastily, “but you are naturally loyal to your late mistress and her family. The trouble is, other people’s lives could be ruined or even lost without the truth. And I believe I can say that we will see you lose nothing by it. If Colonel Niall denies you a character—which I doubt he will—Lady Maule will give you one instead.”
“I’ve never worked for Lady Maule,” Bingham said flatly.
“Then we shall see that you do. Should it become necessary. As things stand, it is Lady Maule who is being accused, quite unfairly, of harming your mistress.”
“I know,” Bingham said. “And I told you yesterday, I don’t hold with that. It’s the colonel’s grief talking, but it still damages her ladyship.”
“Exactly,” Constance said. “So…we have learned some things about Miss Niall since we last spoke. Things that might mean she had made enemies.”
Bingham looked down at her fingers twisting together in her lap and seemed to still them deliberately, but she said nothing. She had not, after all, been asked a question.
“I asked you yesterday, but please tell me truthfully, was Miss Niall a kind mistress?”
Bingham drew in her breath, then slowly shook her head. “She could be,” she said. “When she was in a good mood, she could make me laugh and be kind as anything. Then she’d turn in an instant and slap me. Weren’t a tap, neither. She knocked me down once.”
“Why?” Solomon asked.
“No idea. I’d interrupted her, she said . If you ask me, it was never anything to do with what I did, just how she was feeling.”
“And yet you stayed with her,” Constance pointed out. “For how long?”
“About six months. Since she came back from India. It looks bad if you change positions too often, and then employers won’t trust you.”
“Is that the only reason you stayed?” Constance asked. “Did you look for other positions?”
“No,” Bingham admitted. Constance did not speak further. The maid shifted uncomfortably in the silence. “I told you why. I can’t tell you more.”
“Can’t or won’t?” Constance asked.
“Both,” Bingham said, glaring at her.
“How did you obtain the position with Miss Niall?” Solomon asked. “Did you answer an advertisement?”
“No, I was with an agency in London. They put me forward. Colonel Niall interviewed me and said I would do. Miss Frances deigned to approve.”
“Perhaps you would give me the name and address of that agency? Since I am going up to London today.”
Bingham began to look hunted.
“Doesn’t it exist?” Solomon asked.
“Of course it does!” she said indignantly. “They put me forward for the position, just like I said. They know—” She broke off, biting her lip. “It’s just as I said.”
Constance leaned forward. “Look, we are not interested in your past, except insofar as it touches on the death of Miss Niall. Anything else you say will be treated in confidence.”
“Yes, but what if you decide it gives me a reason to have killed her?” Bingham demanded. “If they can accuse Lady Maule, they can certainly arrest me , however innocent I am!”
“Why?” Constance asked. “What reason did you have, except that she was capricious and occasionally unkind?”
Bingham looked from her to Solomon, then closed her eyes. “I’m damned whatever I say. Look, she made me stay with her. If I tried to leave, she said she’d tell everyone about the reason I left my old place. Not because she liked me—because she didn’t—but because she liked the power. She liked to be in control of people.”
At last . Constance cast Solomon a warning glance before she asked gently, “And what was the reason you left your last employment?”
“I lost my old place because I was accused of stealing and dismissed.” Bingham glared with fresh defiance. “The old bat even admitted she was wrong, once she found the stupid ring I was meant to have stolen. Even offered me my place back, but I wouldn’t go. She gave me a character instead. The agency knows all this, and Miss Niall must have got it out of them. Because if ever I displeased her, she’d point out how easy it would be to get me thrown out again without a character. And who’d believe in two such mistakes?”
Constance sat back in her chair, frowning. “I think…mere power might not have been Miss Niall’s only motive. You knew her secrets, didn’t you? How often she left the house clandestinely, what she had been up to away from home, who gave her presents. She had to keep you with her in case you ruined her reputation more effectively than she could ruin yours.”
Bingham’s eyes widened. “Do you think so?”
“Don’t you?”
It was clear she hadn’t considered matters from this angle, which at least said something for her character. “Perhaps…”
“Do you know who gave her the silver bracelet with the diamond at its center?”
Bingham frowned. “I don’t think I ever saw that one.”
“Did you know she had a number of such items hidden at the back of the bottom drawer in her sitting room desk?”
“Yes, but I never looked. I’d have been well slapped.”
“Did she have a lover?” Constance asked.
Bingham hesitated, then nodded. “Yes, I think so.”
“Who?” Solomon asked when Constance hesitated. She was too afraid, for Elizabeth’s sake, of what the maid would say.
“I don’t know,” Bingham said. “She hinted it was Sir Humphrey Maule, which makes me think he was the one man it wasn’t.”
“We heard a rumor about the head groom at the Grange,” Constance said.
Bingham grimaced. “Lance Godden? Could have been. He’s handsome enough, and full enough of himself to risk it. She was kind of flirtatious with him. Never found any straw on her clothes, though.”
“What did you find on her clothes?” Solomon interjected. “That was…unusual?”
Unexpectedly, Bingham blushed. “A funny smell sometimes. When she come home from one of her…walks.”
Constance again met Solomon’s gaze briefly. “When did she go for these walks? During the afternoon? Evening? Early morning.”
“It varied.”
“But she didn’t tell you where she was going, or who she was meeting?”
“Course not. She just told me to keep quiet or say she was visiting the sick or something equally unlikely. Sometimes she took me with her and sent me to visit the sick on her behalf while she swanned off on her own.”
Constance widened her eyes. “Like when she took you with her to see Lady Maule the night she died. And then sent you home. Do you think she went to see a lover after leaving Lady Maule?”
“I do,” Bingham said with odd reluctance. “And it would explain the nightgown.”
“About the nightgown,” Constance said. “Did you recognize it? The one they brought her body home in?”
Bingham nodded. “I did. But I hadn’t seen it for some time.”
“When was the last time you saw it?”
“About two or three months ago.”
“Did you ask her about it?”
Bingham regarded her with irritation. “Of course I didn’t.”
“So was it common for her to disappear all night on one of her—er…walks?” Solomon asked.
“It wasn’t unheard of.”
“Did she always head off in the same direction?”
“Not that I noticed. I didn’t want to know. I wanted out of that house.”
“And you were trapped,” Constance said.
Solomon turned his head and looked at her thoughtfully, as if comparing her own situation to the maid’s. He probably wanted to believe that Constance too was trapped in the life she led, but he knew too that she had the means to leave it. She merely lacked the desire to do so. That was what he couldn’t understand.
But another thought clearly struck him, directing his attention back to Bingham. “What happened to the maid who looked after Miss Frances before she went to India? Did she go with them? Do you know?”
“Mr. Worcester says she were let go with most of the other servants when they left England.”
“Did she mention a maid in India to you?”
“She made fun of the way the servant girls there talked. I don’t know if she was imitating her personal maid. She mentioned an older woman, too. I didn’t know if she was servant or companion. Or guard.”
Constance pounced. “Why would they guard her?”
“Look, I don’t want to gossip, but it strikes me that they left so suddenly before some scandal broke over her head. I think her father took her away to teach her discipline.”
“But it didn’t work?”
“Not once she came home again.”
“Who do you think her lover was?” Constance asked. Then, as the maid began to look outraged, she added quickly, “I’m not looking for gossip, but we need to know, and in many ways, you knew her better than anyone else.”
“Hmmm. Well, I doubt it was Lance in the stables. She might have teased him a bit, just for the fun of it, but I think she’d have gone for someone more refined. Like Sir Humphrey, if you want the truth. She wanted him before, so they say, and she was always interested in any word of him. Took special care in dressing when he was invited or when they went to The Willows.”
“And if Sir Humphrey would not play?” Constance asked, hiding any dismay very creditably.
“The vicar’s son’s a handsome man. So’s young Mr. Darby over at Shelton Hall.”
Darby . The name of the Nialls’ relations who had held a ball to welcome the family home from India.
“Shelton Hall? That’s ten miles away, isn’t it?” Solomon said.
“Not impossible for a young man.”
“Did she get many letters from this Mr. Darby?”
“A few,” Bingham said. “They were given to me by a message boy and I had to give them directly into her hand. Which I did.”
“I don’t suppose you read any of them first?” Solomon asked without obvious hope.
“God, no. Nor any of hers to him, though to be fair, I think she only wrote him the one. Unless she had poor old Mr. Worcester doing her bidding too.”
“Is that likely?”
“Course it is. She had him wrapped round her little finger. He’d do anything for her.”
“Had there been a recent letter from or to this Mr. Darby when she died?”
Bingham thought. “Couple of days before, maybe. She laughed when she read it.”
“Did she say why it was funny?”
“No.”
“But she might have gone to meet him when she left Lady Maule on the evening she died? Can you think of anywhere nearby they might have met? It would have to be somewhere discreet.”
“I’ve no idea. I’m from London and I don’t know the area.”
“Fair enough,” Solomon said. “Is there anything else, however insignificant it might seem, that you can tell us about Miss Niall and the night she died?”
Bingham shook her head. “Not that I can think of.”
“Well, thank you for coming over here,” Constance said. “You have given us much to think about. Oh, and thank Mr. Niall for allowing you to come.”
“I will. He’s a decent gent. Doesn’t deserve a sister like her.”
“Well,” Solomon murmured, as Bingham retreated to the kitchen to say farewell to the staff there, “he doesn’t have her anymore.”
*
“I thought you didn’t like the railway,” Constance said as they strolled outside to await Sir Humphrey’s carriage, which had been ordered first thing to take Solomon to the railway station.
“I don’t like being dependent on my hosts for transport to the railway while I’m trapped in their house. I never denied it was the quickest way to travel. Should you go alone to call on this Darby?”
“Elizabeth is coming with me, and he has a wife who is the Niall connection.”
The plan was to take Solomon to the nearest railway station, then drive on to the Darbys’ residence, Shelton Hall, where Constance would endeavor to ask questions that might reveal whether or not Mr. Darby had been Frances’s lover. After that, she hoped to speak to Fairfield stable’s Lothario, Lance Godden. Though how one asked a groom if he had been rolling in the hay with the daughter of the house, she hadn’t quite worked out.
“How long will you be gone?” she asked.
“I should be back tomorrow. Just when tomorrow depends on whether I can see Dunne tonight or if I have to wait for the morning.” He looked at her so carefully that she guessed he was hiding unease. “You will be careful? Don’t go riling possible murderers.”
She patted her jacket pocket. “Don’t worry. I still have my own protection.”
This did not appear to comfort him. “Yes, well, I don’t want to have to spring you from a murder charge either.”
“I wonder how I managed all these years without you.”
“So do I.”
Fortunately, Elizabeth emerged from the front door to join them, and the carriage and horses were rumbling around from the stables, so Constance didn’t have to think of a response.
The perfect gentleman as always, Solomon handed both ladies into the carriage and joined them with his back to the horses.
“It’s really very good of you to do all this running about the country on my behalf,” Elizabeth said, a shade nervously. “What is it you hope to learn in London?”
“Something Frances seems to have been investigating,” Solomon replied. They had agreed not to worry Elizabeth with this until they were sure of the facts. “I expect it’s unimportant, but I should make sure.”
“We shall miss you,” Elizabeth said with a warm smile that seemed to surprise Solomon. It caused a strange, unspecific pain in Constance that he regarded his value to others only according to his usefulness. He probably had more friends than he was ever aware of.
At the railway station, he climbed down, bade them a casual good morning, and, with a tip of his hat, sauntered off to buy his ticket.
“What a very obliging man,” Elizabeth remarked as the horses set off again. “Are you sure you are only friends?”
“Yes,” Constance said. She wondered if she sounded disappointed. “My profession would always stand in the way of anything else. Supposing either of us were interested.”
“But it doesn’t stand in the way of friendship,” Elizabeth pointed out.
Constance met her gaze. “You didn’t tell Sir Humphrey about all your past, did you?”
Elizabeth’s eyes fell. She shook her head. “I told him about the baby, and how you took me in. I…omitted the bit in the middle. As you say, some truths would always come between us.”
Considering what Frances had told Humphrey, and the marital tensions that now existed, they had already come between them. But at least she could put Elizabeth’s mind to rest on one subject.
“Frances lied. About being pregnant, at the very least.”
Elizabeth caught her breath. “There was no baby?”
“No. And I’m equally sure there was no affair. Where on earth would he have found the time, apart from anything else? He loves you, Elizabeth. And I believe he is an honorable man.”
Tears sprang to Elizabeth’s eyes. “He deserves better than me.”
“No,” Constance said fiercely. “You’ve never changed who you are. You were always a good woman, and you still are.”
Elizabeth grasped her hand and squeezed. “So are you, Constance. If only people knew…”
“Oh, I rather like being outrageous,” Constance said lightly. “Though it amuses me to play the respectable lady. I’m becoming quite adept at it, don’t you think?”
Elizabeth smiled. “Very adept.”
“So tell me about the Darbys. Mr. Darby in particular…”