Chapter Seventeen
By the time Dr. Owens bustled into the room, Constance had herself back under control. She carefully unwrapped the bandage around Solomon’s head, to show the doctor the wound, but found it hard to move away from him to give the doctor space. It was David who took her arm and gently drew her back.
Dr. Owens cleaned the wound with alcohol, which Constance had already done, and then examined it more closely.
“Is the bullet still in there?” she blurted, terrified of the answer.
Owens poked about, making Solomon’s breath hiss and Constance’s fingers clench. “No, it did not penetrate, merely grazed the surface.”
“But he lost consciousness.”
“I suspect he is concussed. Bullets strike with some force, you know. I’m afraid you will have rather a sore head for the next couple of days.
I’ll leave you some laudanum—no more than a couple of drops in eight hours.
” He rummaged through the salves on the tray Adelaide’s maid had brought, and clearly rejected them, for he then delved into his own bag and smeared ointment across the wound, before applying a fresh dressing and tying it on with the bandage.
The doctor worked neatly and efficiently, which was some comfort to Constance, although she could have wished for a little more sympathy in his manner.
“Who did this to you?” he asked abruptly.
“I don’t know. There was a gunshot and the next thing I knew, I was here with a head full of hammers.”
“Someone shot him from the woods,” David said.
“The woods at the Larchford boundary,” Constance added.
The doctor fastened his bag and stood up.
“If Mrs. Jenkins can put you up until morning, that would be best. Someone should sit with you at all times for the next twenty-four hours. If there is any change, send for me at once. I’ll be back in the morning to change the dressing.
In the meantime”—he glared from Solomon to Constance—“if this was not an accident, you have stirred up considerable ill feeling. There is no need to tell Harvey.”
Constance blinked. “He is the magistrate.”
“Don’t you think he has been through enough? Wills was not shot. You were. You are the strangers here.”
“You shoot strangers here?” David said politely.
Owens flushed and eyed David with some dislike.
“Of course not. Certain strangers blunder in feet first and cause chaos. I have no doubt that Percy was shot by some London criminal he had annoyed, who followed him here and fled before we even found the body. There is nothing to be gained by poking around Channing. As soon as you are able, you should leave.”
Constance placed her hand protectively on Solomon’s shoulder and held the doctor’s gaze.
“Our colleagues are looking into matters in London. As for the rest, my husband is the victim, not the cause, of attempted murder. And it will not be swept under the carpet any more than Percy’s murder will.
Thank you for your care of my husband. You may send your bill to us at Channing House. ”
“Let me show you out, doctor,” Adelaide said smoothly.
The doctor’s mustache bristled and twitched furiously, but in the end, he simply turned on his heel and followed Adelaide to the door.
Constance sank onto the sofa beside Solomon. Tender amusement lurked in his eyes.
“So fierce,” he murmured, touching her cheek.
“Pompous ass,” Constance said, a catch in her voice.
“What did I say?”
“Not you, idiot.”
David laughed and ruffled the good side of Solomon’s hair. “I believe you will do.”
*
Adelaide insisted that they all stay, and had rooms made up. David supported Solomon upstairs to a comfortable bedchamber with a roaring fire and then left Constance alone with the patient.
“I’ll come back in an hour or so,” he promised.
Solomon closed his eyes. The laudanum she had just given him would be making him sleepy. “Do you think Owens knows who did it?”
“I don’t think he wants to know. It’s one thing, someone shooting Percy—who may, after all, have deserved it, according to some—but this makes life too uncomfortable.
” His eyes snapped open. “I don’t want you looking, Constance.
Stay away from that wood until…” He trailed off as though losing his train of thought.
“Dr. Owens was right about one thing,” she said. “We have stirred someone to drastic action, but it’s not against strangers. It must have been against something we’ve asked or found out…”
She thought about that while she held Solomon’s hand and watched him drift off to sleep.
It was easier to concentrate on the case than on those excruciating feelings when Solomon first fell and she’d thought he was dead.
But there was also the warning to be considered.
Whether the shot had been intended purely to warn them off or to kill, it imbued everything with a sense of urgency.
Time was running out to find the killer before whoever that had been tried again to get rid of the people trying to send him—or her—to the gallows.
She wished she had her notes to help order her thoughts. In their absence, she went over in her mind everything they had learned and who had told them what. And a picture was emerging.
Percy had ridden from London, bypassed his own home, and dodged through the woods to make for Dare Hall unseen, no doubt with mischievous intent, to call it no worse.
There, near the top of the hill, he had been shot, probably loaded onto the murderer’s vehicle, and wheeled down to the canal, some time before five o’clock, when West had flooded the lock chamber for Fred Baines’s boat.
Everett had been out and about but didn’t appear to have much motive.
George West had more motive but had been at the lock.
Adelaide might well have motive. No one saw her at her books all afternoon.
She could have gone for a walk and run into Percy and been obliged to defend herself.
It made the most sense, except Constance was inclined to believe her.
She just wished she knew what the woman was keeping back.
And what had Mrs. Harvey been about when she had been seen that afternoon?
They now had another chance of witnesses, of course. Who had an alibi for the shooting of Solomon?
After a couple of hours of listening to every tiny change in his breathing and staring at the bandage around his head for signs of any more blood leaking through it, she found she no longer feared his sudden death.
So when David entered the room, she gave him her chair beside the bed and put on her hat and coat.
“Where are you going?” David asked, frowning.
“To the wood. The shooter might have left a clue.”
“Percy’s killer didn’t,” David pointed out, frowning with sudden alarm. “You shouldn’t go alone.”
Constance widened her eyes and batted her lashes. “I’m no threat, am I? I’m just his wife, the secretary.”
David grinned. “There’s nothing ‘just’ about you, Constance. Why don’t you wait until later, when I can come with you?”
Because it will be dark, because even longer will have passed, because it’s going to rain very soon, because one of us has to stay with Solomon. She smiled. “I shan’t be long.”
She slipped out of the house without anyone else challenging her and walked down toward the canal.
As she came to the place where Solomon had fallen, her heart rose into her mouth, like an echo of the panic that had consumed her then.
She had seen and heard nothing threatening, except that half-glimpsed movement at the corner of her eye as she’d been distracted by David’s approach, the instant before the shot sounded.
When Solomon woke, she must ask him if he remembered anything about those moments…
The hairs on the back of her neck stood up.
There was no one around in any direction, but only the trees provided any cover.
Standing exactly where Solomon had been, she touched her temple, imagining the trajectory of the bullet, then followed it toward the trees.
She walked quickly, searching constantly for any movement about, any splash of color, or glint of metal…
Foolish. It was cloudy. And in any case, the shooter would have fled long since.
Surely he would not dare come back, for fear of the constable or the magistrate…
In fact, Constance’s note to the Harveys had said only that there had been an accident and that Solomon was injured, not how it had happened.
It hadn’t been a conscious decision, just an instinct to give no information to anyone, as if everyone were a suspect.
He’d know now, of course. Word would have gotten out.
As she walked, she alternated between searching the ground and searching ahead. She looked back frequently to make sure she was still following roughly the correct angle to where Solomon had been standing. She kicked up the leaves to see if they had been used to cover any kind of trail.
Had Solomon heard something that had drawn his attention? The cocking of a gun? The crackle of leaves as someone moved through the wood? The shooter, surely, could not have been so very far back to have hit Solomon. Another inch to the right…
She would not think of that. It chilled her blood.
Already, she held her arm across her stomach as though protecting the unborn baby inside her, the baby she had so inexplicably feared.
It seemed she had just been growing used to its presence, worrying too much, as though she and Solomon had no room to love their child as well as each other.
Now that seemed almost laughable. This miracle within her was everything, and not just because it was partly Solomon.
Somehow, it had become a beloved being in its own right.
It even comforted her. She would not risk the child by walking into danger, so there could be none. She certainly felt none.