Chapter 41 #2
Hunt continued to glower. “We are to believe Miss Vivien? Does she say that her sister somehow stole inside the manor, found the stairs, followed Ana Marie, and shoved her?”
Rafe shrugged. “Vivien can’t or won’t verify that.”
To his relief, Fletch stepped in again, looking as if he’d rather chop wood. “This might not be for the ears of ladies.”
“This is about us,” Clare cried. Kate merely sent him a scorching glare and waited. Not a single woman in the room departed.
“This is not proof of anything except Vivien’s possible innocence.
” Fletch rubbed his nose to organize his thoughts.
“Last night, I took one of your footmen to the crypt to talk to Hugh. I threatened we’d break both his arms if he didn’t tell us everything he knew.
He’s pickled what few wits he ever possessed, and he rambles.
I can barely understand his thick dialect.
You might have to check with James to verify he understood the same as I did. ”
Hunt gestured at Walker. “Make note to take a statement from James.”
“Just tell us the way he told you. It doesn’t have to make sense,” Kate suggested, urging Fletch to continue.
Fletch grimaced but went on. “Morgan swears Miss Vivien is his daughter, that Wilma had her when she was only fifteen. As best as I can translate, Morgan left before he knew of the child. Wilma’s mother raised Vivien as her own, as if they were sisters, so Wilma could find a husband.”
The women murmured, but no one interrupted while Fletch gathered his thoughts and tried to find an acceptable way to finish his tale.
“Even Miss Vivien didn’t know that Wilma was her mother, until after they buried Wilma’s husband last year.
Morgan stepped up to claim he was her dad and she had to do what he said.
He had been working on their farm, off and on.
At some point in his winding tale, he told Wilma his brother died and left him his farm. ”
“Before or after Wilma’s husband died?” Rafe asked cynically.
Fletch shrugged. “You try to pry a straight answer out of him. He just says he stepped up and claimed his rightful place in the household. From his ramblings, I gather the thefts began when the crops failed and they couldn’t pay their rent.
After she lost her position with the actors, presumably because of Wilma’s thefts, Vivien stormed out, swearing never to speak to them again.
Wilma and Morgan lost the farm and followed her. ”
“A picture begins to form,” Rafe murmured. “Those poor young ’uns. Is Vivien’s name even Jameson then?”
Fletch shrugged. “Wilma’s husband was the Jameson. Vivien was raised as Wilma’s sister, with the name Cockburn. Would you use that if you wanted to start over?”
Rafe winced. Wilma probably married just to change her name.
“We’ll have to bring Vivien in, get her statement, see if it agrees,” Hunt grumbled. “Unless we find more evidence, we’ll have to release her.”
The women began lamenting over the impoverished circumstances of a family raised in ignorance and what they could do about the poor children.
Hunt finally bellowed into a brief lapse in the chatter.
“So I am to send Wilma to assizes for possibly pushing Ana Marie downstairs thinking she was Kate or because she didn’t want to be labeled thief?
And possibly poisoning poor Jasper and plotting a kidnapping?
Are motive and opportunity sufficient evidence?
And does that mean Morgan gets off free for being an idiot? ”
“An accomplice in kidnapping,” Rafe suggested. “He bound and gagged Miss Marlowe, because Wilma said the toxin would wear off. She’s the one who dried the mushrooms and knows their properties.”
“That’s why we couldn’t find any of the dangerous sort in our woods!” Meera exclaimed. “Wilma brought dried ones with her, most likely picked last summer.”
“When did Wilma’s husband die?” Fletch asked with a heavy dose of irony, echoing Rafe’s earlier cynicism.
Walker glanced at Rafe’s notes. “Last fall.”
“After Morgan showed up bragging about the house he was to inherit,” Rafe surmised.
Whispers rose to concern and anger.
Hunt slammed a hand on his desk to silence the nattering. “And we’re to believe this lunatic also poisoned Mrs. Young, why?”
“Because she’s a lunatic,” Rafe said dryly.
“The one thing Wilma willingly talks about is her daughter. My theory, based on what we’ve heard so far, is that she was investing in her daughter’s future, and hence, her own.
She seems quite convinced Miss Vivien will make a fortune with her dress designs and find a rich husband in the manor with her beauty.
Mrs. Young was about to take the place in the shop that Miss Vivien needed to accomplish this. ”
“To be perfectly fair,” Dr. Walker intruded.
“Wilma may have only wished to incapacitate Mrs. Young, as she did Mr. Jasper. It takes a great deal of the toxin to kill—unless there is an underlying weakness. She couldn’t have known Mrs. Young was already ill, and I doubt she’s sane enough to consider anything beyond what she wants, which was to keep Mrs. Young from the shop. ”
“So she might have poisoned her husband regularly just to incapacitate him and stupidly thought everyone reacted the same.” Kate covered her face with her hands. “The poor woman has probably been unbalanced for a long time. Being forced to bear a child out of wedlock at fifteen. . .”
Rafe knew she was reacting to her own story, but her sympathy wasn’t completely misplaced. What would it do to an already unstable person to have to treat her child as her sister. . . He winced.
Fletch spoke again. “According to Morgan, Wilma’s father drank his earnings and abused his family when drunk.
When he couldn’t pay Morgan for his work, he regularly gave Willa to him as payment.
He would have beaten her if she hadn’t done as ordered.
I don’t imagine there’s any law against Morgan accepting the offer. ”
Kate gasped in horror. “As payment! Can you imagine how being treated as a commodity must have confused an impressionable child? She’s not mad, she’s simply carrying out lessons learned at her father’s hand!
” She widened her eyes, appalled at a new thought.
“What if her mother was the one who taught her how to use mushrooms to incapacitate?”
“The court won’t care,” Hunt said bluntly. “She’ll hang. Morgan will be transported for aiding her, at the very least. I’m happy not to have to be the judge who has to rule on a lunatic and circumstantial evidence. Are we declaring Miss Vivien innocent? Lavender, are you prepared to vouch for her?”
Rafe thought that an enormous burden to place on the shoulders of an eighteen-year-old brought up as a sheltered lady, but the girl proved her character by nodding.
“Viv has her half siblings to raise. She’s not the most efficient seamstress, but her designs have worth.
Maybe without her mother’s. . . influence. . . ?”
Clare hugged her. “If you are willing to work with her, we’ll see that she receives the help she needs with the children.”
“Leaving me to strangle her,” Kate whispered with a sigh.
Rafe would have tried to reassure her but Fletch intervened.
“You’re a good mother. You’ll put some sense into her. Come along, I think you need tea. And the boys are itching to report on a clock.” He helped Kate to her feet and led her out.
Rafe wasn’t the only one in the room who stared as the grump and the squire’s daughter walked off, hand in hand.