Chapter Ten #2
“Nope. Not apart from George opening the lock gates, and Fred Baines, who stepped off his boat for a quick word with us while the chamber filled.”
To Constance, it sounded rehearsed—which didn’t make it a lie.
“Did you hear any gunshots at all that day?” Solomon asked.
“Can’t say I did. Anything else?”
“Does your husband own a pistol?”
Daphne regarded him, her gaze more speculative than outraged. “So happens, he does.”
“How come?”
Daphne shrugged. “No idea. He’s always had it.”
“Would he show it to us if we asked?”
“Only one way to find out.”
They walked on. A boat made its stately way up the canal, punted by a man who called greetings to Daphne. She waved back.
Constance said, “One thing I’ve never understood, although I know it happens more often than not—why do women stay with men who beat them?”
“Why do men stay with women who’re unfaithful?” Daphne retorted.
“Being unfaithful won’t kill him,” Constance pointed out.
Daphne looked at her with a certain amount of curiosity. “You’re an odd duck for a lady. People make mistakes, don’t they? But hitting me once don’t make him a killer. Nor a wife beater. What I did with Percy don’t make me a slut.”
“Why did you risk your marriage for Percy? Did you love him?”
Daphne laughed. It wasn’t bitter, though Constance couldn’t quite work out exactly what it signified.
“A bit, maybe. If you want the truth, it didn’t feel like adultery, more like…
old times. Percy was my first, before I even considered George, so I was never unfaithful—in my mind.
” Her lips twisted into a rueful smile. “George didn’t see it that way. So I ended it.”
“How did Percy take that?”
“Like the man he was—sulked, until the next petticoat caught his eye.”
“Who was the next petticoat?” Constance asked.
“Not sure it mattered to him, to be honest.”
Daphne’s honesty was oddly devastating. She appeared to harbor few illusions and yet regretted nothing. Or, at least, that was what she wanted Constance to believe.
Solomon was striding ahead of them, deliberately giving them time to speak woman to woman.
Constance said, “Rumor has it that he was pursuing Mrs. Jenkins at Dare Hall.”
“She’s pretty enough,” Daphne said indifferently.
“Do you think she succumbed?”
“I wouldn’t have thought so. She ain’t the type.” She stopped dead in the path, staring at Constance. “Are you saying she shot him to protect her virtue?”
“Is that possible, do you think?”
Daphne swore under her breath before setting off again at a much faster pace. “God knows,” she muttered.
“Did you ever see Percy with her?” Constance asked, catching up.
Daphne shook her head impatiently. It seemed the confidences, if that was what they’d been, were over.
Outside Daphne’s cottage, the boat they’d seen earlier was now in the rapidly filling lock chamber. The boatman sat on a stool by the gears, clearly enjoying a laugh and a mug of ale with the lockkeeper.
West raised a hand by way of acknowledgment when his wife called a greeting, but he didn’t get up, let alone help with the shopping, which he was apparently quite happy to let Solomon carry through the cottage to the kitchen.
Daphne glanced over her shoulder at Constance. “Come in for a minute. I’ve got some apple juice I pressed yesterday.”
Surprised, Constance followed her inside, down a short hall, and into a very clean and comfortable kitchen. While Solomon set the baskets down at one end of the table, Daphne pulled out a chair quite casually before she joined Solomon and set about putting away her purchases.
“What will you have?” she asked him. “Ale or apple juice? Sit down.”
Solomon sat obediently beside Constance, who found she was quite glad of the rest. Daphne set about fetching glasses down from the cupboard and poured out two of apple juice and one ale.
“I brew my own,” she told Solomon, setting the glass in front of him and taking the seat opposite.
“It’s very good,” Solomon said after raising his glass to her and sipping.
“So is the apple juice,” Constance added.
Solomon stood up again. “If you don’t mind, I’ll take mine outside and watch the lock at work.”
And use the opportunity to question West, no doubt. She became aware of Daphne watching her. “What?”
“Nothing.” Daphne sipped her juice, then rose again to put away the rest of her shopping. As she stretched up to a high shelf above her head, the fabric of her gown clung to the shape of her waist and rounded belly. She was a curvy woman, but Constance knew enough to recognize the shape.
“You are with child,” she blurted. Well, that made a difference. If the child was Percy’s…
“So are you,” Daphne said, bringing her back to reality with a thud of her heart.
“I can’t imagine why you think so.”
Daphne jerked her head toward the back door, through which Solomon had vanished a minute before. “If he’s such a good man, why are you keeping it secret?”
That was the question Constance could not answer, though she felt her stomach tighten and some emotion washed over her, part shame, part panic. Whatever, she could not deal with it now. She had a mystery to solve.
“Is your husband the father?” she asked Daphne bluntly.
“Yes.”
“Does he think so?”
“Yes.”
Constance swallowed. “Is this your first child?”
Daphne smiled faintly. “Yes.”
“Are you happy about it?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
Aside from the fact the child could be Percy’s… Constance shrugged slightly. “It changes things, does it not? A child.”
“It’s how the world goes round. You think too much.”
Constance blinked in fresh surprise. She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. Instead, an odd gurgle sounded in her throat, which she hastily swallowed. “Perhaps I do.”
*
She took Solomon’s arm as they walked away from the lock along the canal toward Larchford. She needed the physical contact. “Did you learn anything from West?”
“A mere repetition of where he had been and who had seen—nowhere and no one. He admitted to owning a pistol but claimed to be unsure where it was. Though he did offer to hunt it out ‘for the constable.’”
“Well, we are the interlopers. Did he have anything to say about Percy?”
“He admitted to losing to him last Saturday.”
“Did he pay up at the time?”
“No. He said he’d take it off what Percy already owed him.
I mentioned that witnesses reported his being disgruntled at the loss, and he claimed to have been more annoyed by Percy’s attitude, which he called ‘gloating.’ Somehow, though, I can’t see West being so infuriated over it that he shot him several days later.
Did you learn anything more from Mrs. West? ”
For some reason, it felt hard to say, as if she were betraying a confidence, which wasn’t at all the case. Daphne had been quite open about it. “Only that she is pregnant for the first time.”
Solomon glanced at her, brows raised. “Is she, by God? Is it West’s?”
“She says so, as though she is sure. It sounded more like a decision than knowledge to me.”
“Is West so sure?”
“That, I don’t know. It raises some ugly possibilities.”
“Such as West going after Percy for siring the child he had never managed with Daphne. It’s a better motive than the few pennies. A resurgence of the old anger that caused him to beat his wife, reinforced by the insult of the child…”
“Perhaps.”
“You don’t sound enthused by the idea,” Solomon said.
“It’s possible. I certainly wouldn’t rule it out.
But I don’t think she believes it. She thinks West loves her, despite his hitting her, as she appears to love him, despite her adultery—which apparently was born of nostalgia.
Percy was her first lover. But she harbors few illusions about either of them. ”
“I see.”
“Relationships are…odd.” Not least her own with Solomon, as Daphne West had perceived.