Chapter Fifteen #2
“Finished!” he yelled at the top of his voice. “Can I draw now? Mrs. Grey! Mr. Grey! Would you like to see my sea monster? David can draw fish that are as big as a house, only they’re not fish, though they live in the sea.”
“David is clever that way,” Solomon said gravely. “And yes, we would love to see your sea monster.”
Clarence grinned and submitted his notebook to his mother’s waiting hand.
“I’ll be back,” he said, and hared off again in what proved to be a complete circuit of the house, while the adults drank their coffee and Adelaide read through his work. By the time the boy returned, breathless, she was able to praise him and point out a couple careless mistakes.
Solomon liked that her son came first with her, before politeness with guests. She did not send him away nor scold him for disturbing the adults.
“One more run round the house,” she said, “then go and make the corrections and find your drawing to show Mr. and Mrs. Grey. We’ll be back in the house by then. It gets chilly, even in the sun at this time of year.”
Clarence bolted again, this time with his book, running off a child’s excess of energy. Solomon thought of his own child running them ragged, learning and growing…
He rose when Adelaide did, and he and Constance accompanied their hostess into the drawing room where she had received them before. Adelaide invited them to sit, then excused herself and left the room.
Solomon said reluctantly, “I think she did see someone that Thursday.”
“Percy?”
“If so, why won’t she say? She already told us he pestered her.”
“For the sake of her reputation?” Constance guessed. “Or…because she is protecting someone.”
“Who?” Solomon said at once. “She appears to be close to no one and cares for no one, but—” He broke off abruptly, staring at her.
“No one but Clarence,” Constance finished. “Is it possible he somehow got hold of her pistol and there was a terrible accident?”
“Dear God, I hope not.”
“So do I,” Constance said, just as the door opened and Adelaide returned carrying a box, which she offered to Solomon.
“My pistol.”
“Thank you.” He placed the box on his knee and opened it to find the same pretty, old-fashioned double-barreled pistol he had seen in Jamaica years ago.
While he inspected it, Constance distracted Adelaide with other questions. “Can you remember if it rained on Thursday?”
There was a slight pause, either of surprise or memory searching. “I believe there was a shower in the morning, but it was dry by the afternoon, for Clarence was outside playing.”
Solomon found a bullet lined up at each barrel of the gun. As clear as if she had said it yesterday, he remembered Adeliade’s words in Jamaica. “There is no point in having a weapon if you can’t use it.”
“Was he alone?” Constance asked quickly.
“No,” Adelaide replied. “My maid was watching him. You may speak to her if you wish.”
The unspoken words being, You may not question my son. The pistol was clean and oiled, though it was impossible to tell when that had been done.
“Do you know of anyone else who has a pistol?” Constance asked as Solomon finished his inspection.
“I believe Percy Harvey had one. Most people have shotguns, if they have firearms at all.”
Solomon returned the pistol to its box, closed it, and set it on the table. “Might I ask,” he said, “what you were doing while Clarence played outside?”
“I wrestled with the estate books and then went down to the kitchen. Cook and I made the cherry tarts Clarence is particularly fond of.” There was no hostility in her voice, but he could tell she resented the questioning.
Who would not? They were supposed to be friends.
Solomon regretted causing ill feeling, but interestingly, he wasn’t tempted to stop, even though he had never had to question or suspect a friend before.
“Do you want to talk to the servants now?” Adelaide asked, rising and walking toward the bellpull.
“If it would be convenient,” Solomon said, standing also.
When the maid came, Adelaide said, “Mr. Grey will be asking everyone about who and what they saw last Thursday. I’d like you and the others to cooperate fully.”
“Of course, ma’am,” the maid said woodenly.
“Perhaps I could come to the kitchen with you?” Solomon suggested to her.
“This way, sir.”
*
Constance, who was normally the one who spoke to servants on difficult topics, caught Solomon’s gaze as he left. His eyes flickered infinitesimally toward Adelaide, taking her by surprise. He expected her to induce woman-to-woman confidences from his former lover?
But then, with her new clarity of thought, she realized her doubts weren’t caused by inability but by the lingering echo of her own jealousy. Even though Adelaide was his past, and Constance was his present and his future.
She thought of and discarded several conversational gambits before saying, “Do you think Percy’s killing could have been self-defense?”
Adelaide stared at her. “How could I possibly know that?”
“I never met him. You did. To his parents, he was everything that was fine and noble. To others he was a rakehell, and to others again an encroaching and entitled would-be rapist.”
Adelaide eyed her with a mixture of contempt and scorn. “Have you ever shot a man for overfamiliarity?”
“No, but I did once stick a knife in his ribs. I think he survived, but more by luck than planning on my part.” Constance watched the other woman’s eyes widen in shock.
She wasn’t sure why she’d said it. She hadn’t thought of the incident in years, hadn’t even told Solomon, because it was one of many dangerous and violent moments from her past, albeit an extreme one.
Her aim was to shake Adelaide’s damnable composure, and in that she seemed to have succeeded, though the result was more likely to be contempt than confidences.
“I should have known,” Adelaide said. “Solomon would never have married someone ordinary.”
Was that a hint of amusement or even appreciation in her eyes? Whatever, Constance had no chance to study it, for Clarence came bouncing in with several pictures flapping in his hand.
“Look, Mrs. Grey, here’s my sea monster. Mama says he’s the scariest thing she’s ever seen, and David said any ship would flee from it.”
“I should think they would,” Constance agreed. “Is he bigger than a ship?”
Clarence considered. “Bigger than a little ship. These are David’s funny fish. I don’t think his whale is as frightening as my monster.”
Constance took the other pictures from him. “No, but that one comes close.”
Clarence laughed. “It’s a…octopus, but I don’t believe its eyes are really like that.”
“I expect you’re right.” She looked at the next picture—a sketch of Adelaide and Clarence with the canal behind them.
In contrast to the water and the countryside, the figures held little detail, yet David had managed to capture something of Clarence’s energy and curiosity, and something indefinable in the woman that was purely Adelaide.
Even her dress was somehow recognizable as the one she had worn on their first meeting.
Interesting. She wasn’t sure how she felt about it.
David had come a long way, but he was vulnerable, and Adelaide…
Even if she had not killed Percy—and Constance was not convinced—surely any kind of relationship with his brother’s former lover was unhealthy for all of them. But particularly for David.
“Can I draw you and Mama?” Clarence asked her.
“Of course.”
Rather to her surprise, he sped off to the desk, some distance away.
“You must have good eyesight,” Constance remarked.
Clarence grinned. “I’m not good at faces yet. From here I don’t have to be.”
Startled, Constance looked at his mother. “He’s very quick. Another budding artist?” She spoke lightly, and yet perhaps she hadn’t quite hidden the old suspicion that surged up, for Adelaide met her gaze and held it.
“He isn’t Solomon’s,” she said. “He was not conceived until after my marriage, by which time Solomon had been gone for almost a year.”
Heat burned into Constance’s face, from as much shame as embarrassment. To have her suspicions and foolish jealousies read so easily… Yet Adelaide had had no need to say these things.
“Why do you tell me this?” Constance asked.
Adelaide’s lips quirked. “Because I loved Solomon, and because I have to admire the woman brave enough to accept him.”
“It didn’t take bravery,” Constance said. Well, it had, just not the kind Adelaide meant.
“Not for you,” Adelaide said. She drew in a breath. “Do you know what happened to David when he disappeared?”
“Some of it,” Constance said. “Very little. He, too, is a lesson in courage.”
“Yet you protect him. You and Solomon. Is he so fragile?”
“He is stronger every day.”
Again, the smile flickered on Adelaide’s lips. “And that is all you will say.”
“That is all I will say.”
“Yet you want everyone else’s truth?”
“A man was murdered. His family needs justice.”
“Did the man you stabbed get justice?” Adelaide asked, sounding more philosophical than accusing.
“I believed so at the time.”
“Then self-defense is a form of justice to you?”
“I think it has to be. Is that what happened?”
“I don’t know what happened,” Adelaide said.
For no obvious reason, Constance believed her. She waited, for Adelaide seemed about to say more. But the woman rose and walked across the room to see what her son was drawing so assiduously.