Chapter 11 #4
“The west wing.” Penelope raised her brows. “Does Mr. Frederick’s old room lie along that corridor?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“So,” Stokes rumbled, “the countess was heading for that room?”
Gwen blinked at him, then looked at Penelope and nervously said, “I’m sure I couldn’t say, ma’am. She was walking toward that room, and her room isn’t in that wing, but I didn’t see her go in any door.”
“That’s quite all right,” Penelope soothed. “We only need to know what you actually saw.” She threw a stern glance at Stokes, then turned back to Gwen. “Thank you for helping us.” She looked at Morgan. “Please escort Gwen back to Moran House.”
Morgan appeared eager and glanced at Stokes.
Stokes grudgingly nodded. “Yes, take Gwen home to Park Lane, but come back as soon as she’s safely indoors.”
Morgan grinned, saluted, and after Gwen rose from bobbing another curtsy, steered the maid toward the front doors.
“Well!” Feeling thoroughly vindicated, Penelope turned and arched a brow at Stokes and Barnaby. “Shall we go and see what Victoria has to say?”
Wordlessly, Stokes waved her to the door behind the counter, and with a grin, she led the way.
Unlike the interrogation room in the basement with its harsh lamplight, the interview room had a window that overlooked the rear of the building, allowing daylight to illuminate the space.
When Penelope walked in, O’Donnell and Walsh were standing with their backs to the wall behind their prisoner.
Victoria was seated on the opposite side of the polished wooden table, and despite the gentler light, she did not appear at her best.
Her face was pale, and her lips were pinched, and when she looked up and met Penelope’s gaze, Victoria’s expression held a wealth of uncertainty, combined with a large measure of apprehension.
She watched as Penelope, Stokes, and Barnaby took seats on the table’s opposite side, then focused on Stokes and, in a bid for imperiousness, demanded, “Why am I here?”
Penelope sat back and watched Victoria as Stokes replied, “I should inform you that Christopher Fitzhugh has been arrested for the murder of Winslow, your late butler, and also for attempting to murder your late husband.”
Victoria blinked, and her gaze turned inward. Then she looked at Barnaby. “Is that true?”
“Quite true,” he replied. “We have irrefutable evidence that Christopher bought the poison that caused Winslow’s death, and Christopher will be convicted on both charges.”
To Penelope’s eyes, Victoria had grown noticeably paler. Hoping to jolt her further, Penelope said, “And of course, now there’s poor Theodore, who was also poisoned.”
“What?” Victoria’s eyes grew round, and her complexion lost all remaining color.
Penelope widened her own eyes. “Haven’t you heard?”
Patently horrified, like an automaton, Victoria shook her head from side to side. “No,” she whispered, “I hadn’t heard.”
Leaning forward and clasping her hands on the table, Penelope explained, “The cigars in that box in the earl’s study.
They’d been very carefully poisoned, and when they arrived at Moran House on Monday evening, Vincent and Theodore slipped away, waited for their moment, then raided the earl’s study for what they could find.
The only things they found worth taking were the cigars. They took one each.”
Victoria appeared genuinely distressed. “Oh God.”
“But, of course,” Penelope went on, “now we’ve spoken with Christopher, we know that while he bought the poison and added it to the whiskey decanter, we also know he wasn’t the one who poisoned the cigars.”
Stokes confirmed, “He admits to the whiskey decanter but not the cigars.”
With a faint, encouraging smile, Penelope continued, “So, please tell us, Victoria, why you thought to move the box containing the rest of the cigars, all of which were also poisoned, from your late husband’s study to Frederick’s old room?”
As if assisting, Barnaby explained, “We’ve heard from a witness who saw you carrying the box upstairs.”
Victoria moistened her lips, then said, “I…” Her eyes darted this way, then that.
Helpfully, in an entirely reasonable tone, Penelope offered, “Because after Winslow was accidentally poisoned and died, you wanted to remove the cigars in case they tempted someone else who would then also die?”
Victoria jumped on the excuse. “Yes.” She nodded. “I wanted to be sure no one else would accidentally die.”
Penelope blinked, then looked confused. “But how did you know the cigars were poisoned?” She met Victoria’s eyes.
“You just told us—and showed us—that you didn’t know Theodore had been poisoned via one of the cigars.
” Holding Victoria’s gaze, Penelope tilted her head.
“Why did you think moving the cigars would guard against further poisonings?”
Across the table, Victoria stared at Penelope.
Victoria opened her mouth, then shut it.
Finally, dropping all pretense, she narrowed her eyes and spat, “All right! Yes, I knew the cigars were poisoned because I’d poisoned them.
But I never meant for anyone but Gordon…
” She stretched out one hand as if imploring their understanding.
“Truly, he so rarely invited anyone to visit, much less into his study, that the person by far most likely to die from either the whiskey or the cigars was him!”
She put her hands to her face. “I was horrified when I heard that Winslow had died. You’d already removed the decanter, so the only thing I could do was take the cigars and leave them somewhere out of sight until I could get rid of them.”
From her tone, Penelope judged that was all true.
Then, with her gaze fixing on the table, Victoria uttered a disgusted sound. “What a useless pair of plotters we turned out to be.”
“You and Christopher?” Barnaby clarified.
Victoria nodded. “And in the end, if we’d just waited another day, we wouldn’t have needed to do anything!
Gordon was dead, and Frederick would have inherited, and no matter what Christopher says, Frederick would have behaved much more reasonably.
He was always a sensible soul and would have helped Christopher out of the mire and loosened the purse strings for me, and that’s really all either of us wanted. ”
Stokes bluntly asked, “Do you have any idea who killed the earl?”
Victoria shook her head. “No. None. But if I knew who had done it, I would shake their hand and call down blessings upon them.”
Puzzled, her gaze on Victoria, Penelope asked, “Why? Why did Moran have to die?”
Victoria met Penelope’s gaze, then smiled tightly.
“Let me give you a glimpse of what it was like being a member of the House of Moran. Gordon was the epitome of a frugal man. He was dictatorial as to expenses and turned mean and nasty if anyone questioned his views. He expected us—all the rest of the family—to live up to his mental standard of how we should, as members of the House of Moran, present to the world, but he insisted that we scrimped and saved to do it! He expected us to manage on allowances that simply weren’t sufficient, and he wouldn’t listen to any complaints. It was a constant battle.”
They listened as Victoria outlined a host of what she termed her late husband’s small meannesses, from his refusal to bestow christening gifts on his nephews and nieces, much less send gifts on their birthdays, to his stance against footing the bill for any refurbishment of the family’s private rooms. “He always carried on about social standing and insisted an appropriate facade should be maintained, but simultaneously, he refused to pay for any of it.”
Victoria’s list was sobering; with her insights into the normal expenses of a ton family, Penelope was quietly aghast.
Finally, Victoria concluded, “The long and the short of it is that Gordon was a miser and reveled in that state.”
When she fell silent, Penelope said, “Thank you for explaining.” There were several aspects she didn’t yet fully understand, but she knew much more than she had before.
Stokes glanced at Penelope, then said to Victoria, “Lady Fitzhugh, I’m arresting you for the attempted murder of your late husband, the Earl of Moran.”
Penelope exchanged a glance with Barnaby, then rose, and Barnaby and Stokes followed suit.
Victoria looked up and met their gazes, then, her expression turning bleak, she shrugged and looked at the table again.
They quit the room, leaving O’Donnell and Walsh to escort Victoria to a cell.
On reaching the foyer, Penelope paused and thought over all Victoria had revealed.
Barnaby and Stokes halted to either side and, judging by their expressions, seemed to be similarly occupied.
Eventually, Penelope ventured, “I can understand Christopher wanting to seize the title and the associated wealth, and for Victoria, I can appreciate that the frustration and uncertainty engendered by forever being condemned to live on a frugal edge—seemingly without any necessity but solely because of one man’s meanness—might have, in the end, proved too galling to be borne.
Yet if the earl being miserly toward his family is, in fact, the motive behind his actual murder, and Frederick is truly as desperate for funds as Christopher believes, then Frederick is the obvious suspect—except that he remained in full view of all the rest of the family throughout the period during which the murder was committed. ”
Frowning, Barnaby observed, “Well, at least we’ve learned who the poisoner was—or rather, who the poisoners were.”
Stokes grimaced and glanced at Barnaby and Penelope. “Yet despite that advance, as far as I can see, we’re no closer to identifying who actually murdered the Earl of Moran.”