Chapter Thirteen
Mrs. Henriette Harvey, Etta to her family and friends, lay very still, waiting for her husband to close her bedroom door behind him. She listened to his footsteps fading down the hall away from her, and the silence closed in. She hated being alone because she could not then stop thinking.
The thoughts were already there, swirling around her head, black, grim, hopeless.
She kept her eyes closed, trying to listen to the birdsong in the tree beyond her window. But in her head, they sang words, dark, evil words. Shame and sorrow devoured her.
I won’t give in, I won’t…
Richard wanted her to sleep, as if she could, as if it could possibly make her feel better if she did.
With a gasp, she threw off the covers and jumped out of bed.
Tears streamed down her face as she stumbled to the wardrobe and wrenched open the door.
There were three shelves here, containing hats and reticules.
On the bottom shelf was an elegant leather holdall, with an old carpetbag stuffed down behind it.
The carpetbag looked empty, but Daphne knew it wasn’t.
She wrenched it out and opened it, dragging out what had been within.
A small black pistol.
She stumbled to the basket in the corner of the room containing several old garments for charity. Seizing the woolen gown at the top, she wrapped it round and round the little pistol until she could not feel its cool, hard seduction. Then she crammed it back in the carpetbag and fastened it.
It wasn’t enough.
She dragged the chair over from her dressing table and stood on it to reach the smaller valise on top of the wardrobe. She climbed off the chair and opened the valise so that she could stuff the carpetbag inside it. She turned the little key and thrust it in her pocket.
It still wasn’t enough.
Grabbing the valise, she left her bedroom. The maids had long since finished up here, so it was easy to reach the attic stairs without anyone seeing her. She ran up and opened the door at the top.
There was a satisfying amount of junk here.
She had been talking to Richard only the other week about getting someone to take the whole lot away as rubbish.
She raked around the dusty piles until she found the oldest trunk with the missing handle and a rusty key.
Pausing for a moment, she whipped a moth-eaten Holland cover off what had once been her late mother-in-law’s favorite chair, and wrapped the valise in it like a parcel.
Then she placed the lot in the trunk, turned the key with some difficulty, and put that in her dress pocket with the other.
She pulled some other boxes on top of the trunk, then, taking a deep breath, she rose and dusted off her gown.
There. That was enough, until the attic was cleared.
Providing she got rid of the keys. She hurried back down to her room and took a black coat from the wardrobe.
Richard would be in his study, drinking, probably, and telling himself or his friends that he was looking after his poor wife.
He wouldn’t notice she’d gone, and she could easily be back for tea with their guests from London.
She was just tiptoeing across the hall to the front door when she heard the maids chattering in the morning room, which they were no doubt meant to be dusting and hanging with black crepe.
“Oh, no,” Maisie said. “Patrick saw her walking along the far side of the canal, staring at the ground and hitting the grass with a stick! He were doing the same in the wood.”
They must be talking about those very odd guests Richard had brought home to find Percy, and now to discover what had happened to him as if it were not perfectly clear…
“What, like looking for something?” Jenny asked avidly. “I wonder what?”
“The gun!” Maisie said impatiently. “Of course they’re looking for the gun what shot poor Mr. Percy!”
“What good will that do?” Jenny demanded. “Won’t bring him back, will it? Besides, ain’t that what Constable Wills is for?”
“He’s too busy dredging all the rubbish out the canal,” Maisie said derisively.
Etta eased open the front door and slipped outside. She hurried away down the drive on foot, for she dared not wait for the carriage in case Richard saw her and sent her back to bed. She walked briskly down the drive and into town.
She was a little disappointed not to meet anyone en route, for the slightest, most mundane conversation stopped her thinking just for a moment or two, slowed the creeping, terrible shame.
The keys for the valise and the broken trunk were now inside her glove, and she fingered them, reluctant to drop them along the roadway in case the incredibly inquisitive Greys found them during their search.
Stupidly, she even felt afraid that Wills would find them if she dropped them in the canal.
When she reached Channing, she finally glimpsed friends.
Sir Felix Everett had stopped in the high street to converse with Penelope Owens and Miss Ramsden the schoolteacher.
Etta glanced hastily around in case Penelope’s father was close by—she didn’t want the doctor sending her home just yet, let alone taking her there.
The trio broke off as soon as she advanced toward them. They all smiled and Sir Felix, always the perfect gentleman, tipped his hat to her.
“Mrs. Harvey, good afternoon,” he said. “Perhaps I might escort you on your errands?”
“Oh, no, thank you, sir. To be perfectly honest, I have none. I merely felt the need of some fresh air and exercise and find I have walked a little farther than I meant to.”
“Allow me to present my condolences on your terrible loss, ma’am,” Miss Ramsden twittered. “I was never more shocked in my life.”
“Thank you. You are very kind,” Etta replied, trying not to sound too mechanical in her response—though, really, how many proper responses were there? The civilized etiquette of grief was suffocating.
“Is there any news from Mr. and Mrs. Grey?” Penelope asked. She could not quite keep the indignation from her pleasant face, and Etta wondered how the investigators had offended her.
“Oh, I believe they are still searching along the canal banks,” Etta said vaguely, recalling the maids’ gossip as she left.
“They called on Sir Felix this morning, prying—”
“Not prying, Miss Owens,” Sir Felix said mildly.
“I would have thought they would confine their investigations to the lower orders,” Miss Ramsden said in shocked tones. “To strangers in town. There’s a very eccentric-looking man at the inn, for example.”
So the whole town knew about Richard’s investigators. There would be no keeping the business quiet. Etta was surprised to find she didn’t care.
“We must pray the culprit is found quickly,” Penelope said.
Guilt and blackness swarmed over Etta once more. Nothing could bring her son back. Nothing…
“I must go,” she said on a gasp. “Goodbye!” She got away from them, focusing desperately on her mission.
*
Constance and Solomon had wandered through the poorer parts of town, partly to get a better feel for the place, and partly because they had caught sight of Dr. Owens and decided to follow him in the hope of a word.
On the way, they asked a few questions of passersby, shopkeepers, and loungers at alehouses.
None of them admitted to knowing Percy. But then, the rumors of his death must have reached here, too.
“Likes of him never come down here,” said a rough individual outside an alehouse with no signs of its purpose or even of a welcome, only the open door allowing a glimpse of two rickety tables and a few stools and mugs within.
The rough individual smelled very strongly of stale beer and tobacco, as if his clothes had been soaked in the mixture.
Constance shifted slightly to avoid his breath. “You want to ask at the Duke’s Arms.”
“Thank you,” Constance said politely, for Solomon was already tugging her onward. She was about to demand, with some asperity, about the hurry when he squeezed her hand between his elbow and his body.
“Straight ahead,” he murmured.
Beyond the dirty children playing in the street, and an old man walking with a tired donkey weighed down with a few sticks of furniture, was an upright lady in a black cloak and hat.
She stood out like a jewel among gravel.
Even disguised by the billowing cloak, she looked thin and walked very fast.
Constance was startled. “Is that…?”
“It looks like her to me.”
They sped up. “Where did she come from?” Constance asked.
“She just rounded that corner.”
And appeared to be hurrying back in the direction of the high street and the market square. Where on earth had she been, and why? They were closer now, and from the quick, birdlike turns of her head, they could clearly see that it was indeed Mrs. Harvey.
As one, Constance and Solomon hung back, curious to see where she would go, what she would do. She carried no bag, no basket, no umbrella. She slowed. Constance darted a glance to the side, in search of a hiding place. But they didn’t need one.
Mrs. Harvey halted, without turning her head. She appeared to be holding one hand in front of her and adjusting her glove, as though it were uncomfortable.
Solomon caught his breath. Mrs. Harvey marched purposefully on. Solomon walked faster, his gaze fixed.
“What was all that?” Constance demanded.
“She dropped something,” Solomon said. “From her glove. Two things, both tiny.”
“Buttons that fell off her glove?” Constance hazarded.
“I don’t know.”
And Constance felt somewhat reluctant to look among the effluence of the gutters, which looked rather like open sewers.
Fortunately, Solomon had kept his stick from their earlier search of the canal bank, so under the curious stares of a dog and a laborer walking home, and an old woman at the dirty window of the overhanging building, he poked the stick into the unspeakable mess.
Something bright glinted momentarily and he dragged it free with the stick.
He handed Constance his large handkerchief and she bent to pick up the tiny object.