Chapter 5
Chapter Five
The cottage was small, so it didn’t take long to go through it.
We had seen most of the kitchen from the doorway earlier, and actually being inside it didn’t uncover anything that looking at it from the door hadn’t done.
The sitting room didn’t offer anything interesting, either.
It was a small, cozy room with a fireplace on one wall and the front door and window on the other.
I peered through the leaded glass into the square, but the landscape was deserted.
Inside the sitting room, a small sofa with carved arms and legs sat in front of a low table, and a sideboard with two candlesticks and a wireless was off to the side.
A basket next to the sofa held skeins of yarn and a pair of knitting needles.
Morrison had been in the process of making something soft and rose-colored.
I didn’t want to remove it from the basket and shake it out—fingerprints, you know—but it appeared too elaborate to be a scarf, so perhaps a jumper or a cardigan.
It looked pretty, with an intricate braided pattern, so it was a shame that it would never be finished.
A local newspaper lay in the middle of the coffee table, dated for two days ago. I wondered whether that meant something—perhaps Morrison’s death had taken place a day earlier than we’d thought, and that was why yesterday’s paper wasn’t here. She hadn’t been alive to fetch it.
Although it was just as likely that The Evesham Journal and Four Shires Advertiser was a weekly and not a daily. It was perhaps worth looking into, and the police would surely do that if there was a question about Morrison’s time of death, but I didn’t think we could draw any conclusions from it.
Nothing about the sitting room set up any red flags. Constance and I exchanged a glance and headed back to the kitchen and to the staircase to the first floor.
As I had surmised, there was a single bedroom and a bath up there, with a storage closet under the eaves.
The latter was mostly empty. The rooms were comfortably but sparsely furnished, and there were no extras sitting around.
Not at all like at Sutherland Hall and Beckwith Place, which are overflowing with detritus from generations of previous occupants.
The bathroom was what you’d expect: small and white and tiled, with a sink, a commode, and a bathtub with feet. Nothing was out of place, and there was no indication that the murderer had used the sink. And why would he, or she, when the murder weapon was a pillow?
The door to the bedroom was standing open, either because Morrison liked to sleep with it that way or because Constable Woodin had opened it and neglected to close it after seeing what was inside.
I hadn’t peeked through it into the bedroom yet. Neither of us was particularly eager to do this. It was clear from the dread in Constance’s eyes, and I could feel it in the pit of my own stomach.
“It’s just for a moment,” I told her reassuringly. “As soon as you’ve looked at her and ascertained that she’s really Morrison, you can go back to Christopher. I won’t make you stick around.”
“But you’ll stick around?”
“Just for a quick look at the bedroom. A minute or two, no more.”
I didn’t think we had been inside the cottage for more than five minutes, and surely it was much too soon for Francis and Constable Woodin to return, but you never knew who else might turn up outside, and thus discover that we were compromising the crime scene.
Constance squared her shoulders, and I did the same, before we stepped through.
The bedroom was as expected: small and tucked under the eaves.
A narrow bed sat under a small window, flanked by a night table, while a chair and toiletries table sat against the opposite wall.
A sprigged frock was draped across the back of the chair, with a pair of stockings on top.
There were no shoes, just a pair of slippers beside the bed, next to a pillow.
The murder weapon, I presumed.
It appeared to be an average bed pillow. Reasonably fluffy, I would say. It was roundish rather than flat. Would that make it more or less difficult to smother someone with it? A denser pillow—less air inside—might make the job easier, but then again, what did I know about the mechanics of murder?
I pictured myself pressing it down over the face of the woman on the bed. Would I be strong enough physically to murder another woman by means of a pillow? She would fight back, I assumed, once she woke up and realized what was going on.
For a man—or for most men—it might be easy. For a woman, perhaps less so.
I slid Constance a sideways glance. She was smaller than me, and less athletic.
I might be able to smother her, at least if I caught her asleep and unaware and I had a second or two to get the pillow in place before she awoke.
Someone like Laetitia Marsden, on the other hand, I would definitely not be able to murder.
Not with a pillow. But Morrison had been twice the age of either of them.
She had been asleep and possibly under the influence of a sleeping draught.
The vial was there on the night table, in plain view.
With everything else considered, I turned my attention to the bed and its occupant.
Morrison was lying on her back, eyes wide and bloodshot, giving her a strangely startled appearance.
She was a woman of middle age, with bobbed brown hair turning gray.
It looked as if it were threaded through with strands of tinsel.
The eyes were blue, cloudy under thin brows.
Her mouth was open, and there was a trace of blood on the lower lip: perhaps she had bit herself while the pillow was held over her face.
The skin was a pasty white, as the blood had already started to respond to gravity and pool in the parts of the body that touched the bedclothes.
Beside me, Constance made a little noise, and I glanced at her. She was biting her lip, and her eyes—brown, not blue—were huge and filled with sadness.
“Is it she?” I asked. “Is it Lydia Morrison?”
Constance nodded.
“Go on, then. Get some fresh air. Sit with Christopher.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be right behind you,” I said. “Just a minute or two.”
“There isn’t much here.”
No, there wasn’t. I still wanted to look at it. “I won’t be long. Go on.”
I nudged her towards the door. She went, after one final look at Morrison. I waited for her footsteps to start down the stairs before I turned to the toilet table.
Morrison’s handbag was sitting there, next to a handkerchief and a door key. The key was for the front door, no doubt. The handkerchief didn’t appear to have been used. A pair of small earrings sat next to it. Marcasite, with screw-on backs. Nice-looking, but not fancy and probably not valuable.
I draped Christopher’s handkerchief over my hand before I flicked open the clip on the handbag and peered in.
A coin purse sat inside, next to a lipstick and a few other odds and ends. One of them was a small black book, and my heart sped up as I pulled it out. A calendar showing Morrison’s movements over the past six months—who she had met and communicated with—would come in handy.
But it was just an address book. I flicked through the pages anyway, but there was nothing of interest inside. She did not have Margaret Hughes’s address in Bristol written under H, although that didn’t necessarily mean anything. She might have known it and simply not have noted it down.
The Astleys were in there, or at least the ones of them who lived at Sutherland Hall.
Iris Peckham’s name was under the Ps, with Constance’s and her brother Gilbert’s names in a parenthesis below, along with Johanna de Vos’s.
The M page was filled with lots of names: there were the Marsdens: Lady Euphemia and Lord Maurice, Geoffrey and Laetitia.
There was Doctor Lionel Meadows, the medical chap in Little Sutherland—which was interesting, considering that there were more than two decades since Morrison had lived in Wiltshire—and there was also a name and an address for an Edith Morrison in Somerset.
A mother, or perhaps a sister. Might be a daughter, although that wasn’t very likely.
Surely someone would have known if Morrison had had a daughter.
Unless that was why Doctor Meadows’s name was on the list. If Morrison had been young, and had given birth to a child during the time she had worked for Aunt Charlotte, Doctor Meadows may have delivered the baby.
For all I knew, it might have been his child.
Stranger things have happened. Twenty-four years ago, they had all been young, and there was nothing inherently terrible about the local doctor having had a fling with one of the maids at the Hall.
He ought to have married her, though, if that were the case. So perhaps he hadn’t been the father of the child. Perhaps someone else had been.
What if it was Uncle Harold? A daughter wouldn’t have meant anything to him; he was focused on a male heir, so he wouldn’t have cared about an illegitimate daughter.
And that would explain why Aunt Charlotte had contacted her good friend Lady Peckham and traded her lady’s maid away to Constance’s mother in exchange for Hughes.
I gave Morrison a dubious look. Compared to Aunt Charlotte—who had been a beautiful woman—she was nothing to look at.
Aunt Charlotte had been attractive up until the day before she died.
A little strained at that point, of course—committing several murders and attempted murders can take it out of a woman—but she had still been lovely.
Morrison was merely average, and had probably been average in her youth, as well.