Chapter Fourteen
George West meandered home from the Duke’s Arms, annoyed by his own confusion.
A pint less might have better for him, but he could hardly put it back now.
The trouble was, he had to make a happy show in the taproom of celebrating the imminent birth of his first child, while he knew damn well everyone doubted the baby was his.
That was partly his own fault, of course.
By bruising Daphne so obviously, he’d confirmed the local rumors of her affair with Percy bloody Harvey.
Since then, Daphne had explained to him why the child couldn’t be Percy’s, and he believed her, both because it made sense and because Daphne never lied—not to him, at any rate.
He could smell dinner—mouth-wateringly delicious—before he even opened the back door and entered the kitchen. Daphne was removing a large pot from the oven. The table was already set for two.
“Just in time,” she said. “Wash. Sit.”
He dunked his hands in the sink, scrubbed half-heartedly, and dried them.
Not for the first time, he recognized his good fortune in Daphne.
She could tell to the ounce how much he’d had to drink at the Duke, just by the way he walked, but she never scolded, never complained that he was late, just put his dinner in front of him, let him eat and sleep it off.
Generally, it was George who apologized the next day.
The unexpected wave of tenderness took him by surprise, and he didn’t like how weak it made him feel. So he sat down at the table and growled, “They were there again.”
“Who was where?” she asked, serving the divine-smelling stew onto plates.
“Those nosy Greys from Channing House.”
“In the taproom?” Daphne said in surprise.
“Of course not in the bloody taproom! But at the inn, having tea. There’s two of ’em, you know.”
“Yes, there usually is in a married couple.”
He gave a bark of laughter. “Don’t be smart. I mean two of him. Must be a brother or something. I thought I was seeing double till I realized they wore different clothes. The double stays at the inn, watching people, nosing about, and reporting back to their nibses.”
“You don’t know that. I sort of like her. And he’s not so hard to look at it.”
She did that deliberately, of course, showing him that she looked, she noticed. It made Percy Harvey so much less. He was probably mad to believe she wouldn’t ever stray again, but he did.
“So what did you tell her?” he demanded. “Your high-and-mighty new friend?”
She set his plate in front of him. “That you were with me all morning at the market and then at home with me. That you opened the gates for Fred’s boat that afternoon.”
“And you told them about the pistol. He asked me about it.”
“Other people know about the pistol,” she said, sitting at her own place and picking up her fork. “You’d better just pray other people don’t also know you weren’t at home at all on Thursday afternoon.”
He forked a mouthful of hot stew into his mouth. It tasted like it smelled, damned good. “No one saw me.”
“Fred Baines certainly didn’t,” she retorted. “Let’s hope he don’t come back and blab that I worked the lock for him, not you.”
George made a rude noise with his mouth full. It should have made her laugh or tell him off, depending on her mood. But she didn’t seem to notice. He heard her intake of breath.
“You didn’t shoot Percy, did you, George?”
He stabbed viciously at the stew. “Who cares who shot him? Everyone’s glad he’s dead.”
*
Constance swung around, the pistol still clutched in her hand. Etta Harvey stood there, her white face clutched in her trembling hands. She let out a moan.
“Oh, no, what have you done? What have you done? Put it away!”
Since it was so clearly distressing her, Constance dropped it back into the carpetbag, and bundled the dress on top of it.
“It was safe up here,” Etta railed. “I’d have forgotten in time. No one has any reason to come up here, no use for…” She trailed off into another desperate moan.
Constance went to her, instinctively putting her arms around the distraught woman. For a moment, Etta remained rigid in her hold, and then, as tears squeezed from her eyes, she sagged.
Constance held her, meeting Solomon’s gaze over her shoulder. After a few moments, she murmured soothingly, “There, there. I’m so sorry to upset you further, but you must see that we have to know. Is that Percy’s gun?”
Etta stilled. “Percy’s?” She pulled back, staring at Constance. “Of course not. It’s mine.”
“You hid it there?” Solomon asked gently. “Why?”
Constance felt a stinging sensation in her abdomen. Please don’t have shot your son. Please…
Etta made a sound of sheer distress, deep in her throat. Constance walked her the few steps to the uncovered chair and lowered her into it, then perched on the arm beside her, while Solomon shifted to block the distraught woman’s view of the carpetbag and the open trunk.
“Why did you hide it?” Constance repeated.
“So that I would never see it,” Etta replied, weeping soundlessly now. “Never be tempted…”
Oh God… Constance swallowed. “Never be tempted to shoot anyone else?”
“It’s a sin,” Etta gasped. “Even now…”
“What did you do?” Constance asked. She didn’t want to hear and yet they had to.
“I hid it,” Etta said, with the first hint of impatience, baffling Constance, who feared the woman was utterly mad.
It was Solomon who caught on first. He crouched down to be on a level with Etta. “You hid the pistol, so that you would not be tempted to use it on yourself.”
Etta squeezed her eyes shut in shame while the tears poured down her cheeks. She nodded. “It’s so hard, so hard now with Percy gone. There is nothing. I am nothing. Yet I must not give in, I must not. I must not.”
“You shall not,” Solomon said firmly. “Of course you shall not. Come, let us go down and find your maid.”
Etta seemed too exhausted not to obey. She rose with Constance’s help and allowed herself to be led like a child back to her bedchamber.
The maid, a woman of around Etta’s own age, glowered at Constance as though blaming her for her mistress’s state.
Though as Constance turned to leave again, she seemed to change her mind, for she called, “Thank you, ma’am,” after her.
*
“How did you know?” Constance asked Solomon as soon as she had shut their bedroom door.
In the dressing room, Solomon was changing into evening clothes, his chest bare as he reached into the drawer for a clean shirt.
“That she is suicidal?” He didn’t look at her, concentrating on his clothes. “It just came to me. She hides it well, behind her constant busyness, but there is something about the eyes. A…blackness. It wasn’t visible, at least not to me, until she lost control over seeing the pistol.”
She went to him then, her mouth dry with fear, and took both his hands. “Solomon. Look at me. How did you recognize this blackness? Because it is in you? Or someone you know?”
He didn’t usually have such difficulty meeting her gaze, but he managed it.
His fingers tightened around hers. “I have seen it a few times, once in someone who acted upon it. I could do nothing but support his family. Constance, don’t look like that.
In the past, when I was young, such thoughts brushed my mind.
I never seriously thought of acting on them.
But I understand the distraction of…busyness. ”
She stared at him, almost as if she had never seen him before. “That was why you were so driven? So determined to succeed. That’s why you built your empire.”
He shook his head. “No, no. Well, perhaps a little, before I even left Jamaica. It is not in me. Not even before I met you.”
Terror flowed over her. She could not help touching his face, his hair. She pressed her body to his, for he was so precious, all of him.
He stroked her hair. “Don’t be afraid for me. There is no need. It is something I understand but could never do. You must have seen it in others, the hopeless and the desperate, and even in successful people. They hide it like an illness.”
“Like Etta. We have to tell Harvey.”
He nodded. “I know.”
“Solomon?”
“Yes?”
“She could still have killed Percy with that pistol. She was seen that day near Adelaide’s house.”
“I know,” he said again.
*
Solomon half expected Etta to take dinner in her room.
But she duly appeared at the table, apparently her usual self, with no sign of her distress apart from slightly puffy and reddened eyes.
It was another difficult meal, and in spite of the hard conversation to come with his host, Solomon was glad when the ladies left them.
“We shan’t linger for long,” Harvey said, pouring them each a glass of port. “I’m a little worried about Etta. She was supposed to be resting this afternoon, but when the maid went to wake her for tea, she had gone. She didn’t come back until almost dinnertime and would not say where she had been.”
“We know some of where she was,” Solomon said. “We saw her in a somewhat insalubrious area of Channing, where she deliberately dropped those in the gutter.” He placed the two small keys on the table between them.
Harvey frowned. “That is why you asked about them?”
“We discovered that one fitted an old trunk recently put in the attic, and the other fits the valise within it. They were hiding this pistol.” Solomon took the weapon from his pocket and placed it on the table beside the keys.
“That’s Etta’s,” Harvey said.
“That’s what she said. Why does she have a pistol?”
“I gave it to her years ago, when we first moved to this house. She was unused to the country then and didn’t feel safe when I was away from home. She kept it locked in her bedside table, which seemed to make her feel better. I haven’t thought of it in years.”
“I’m afraid you have to think of it now. She was hiding it from herself.”
Harvey’s face flushed. “Dear God. She is subject to melancholia, of course, but she has been so much better… Losing Percy must have…”