Chapter Eighteen #2
He didn’t seem convinced, but he only shrugged and carried on coloring in her dress, while Constance continued to gaze at David’s portrait of Adelaide.
He had drawn it the day before yesterday, when he had been with Adelaide and Clarence by the canal.
David had not detailed the paisley pattern of the blue cloth, except in very vague swirls, but oddly enough, he had shown what looked like a jagged tear to the left side of the gown.
Her breath caught and she jumped to her feet.
“You must show me when it’s finished,” she told the boy, and left deep in thought, to fetch tea and toast for Solomon and herself.
She found the maid about to bring it up, and saved her the trouble, but it seemed to take an awfully long time to return to Solomon’s room.
“David,” she said, interrupting their conversation without apology while she placed the toast on the bedside table between them, “the day you drew Adelaide and Clarence by the canal, had she torn her dress?”
David blinked. “Why, yes. It caught on some bramble thorns and she yanked it free. How did you know?”
“You drew the tear on her gown.”
“Did I?” He sounded rueful. “How very unflattering of me.”
“Where were those brambles?” Constance asked, ferrying cups of tea to both brothers before perching on the side of the bed.
“In that rough, wooded area behind where I was drawing.”
“Not in the Larchford wood where we were yesterday?”
“No, much nearer the town.”
Constance let out a breath and drew the torn cloth from her pocket. “Is this from the gown she wore that day?”
Unlike many men, David didn’t even need to think about it. “Yes.”
“Then this clears her. Unless she’d been at the Larchford wood before she met you—”
“I saw it tear,” David interrupted.
“Then that confirms my other suspicion,” Constance said triumphantly.
“Not only could she not have torn the gown at Larchford Wood yesterday, but someone must have deliberately planted the cloth there. I thought at the time the twig it was hooked onto was not strong enough to tear off such a chunk of good cloth.”
“But why would anyone do that?” David demanded.
“To implicate her,” Constance said. “And to de-implicate themselves.”
“Who?” David asked.
“I don’t know,” Constance said, deflated.
“But a woman like her must have more than one admirer. Most of the men in the area must have noticed her, and that can cause ill feeling out of all proportion among the men concerned, and the women who know them. For example, I’m sure Penelope Owens likes Sir Felix Everett, and I’m even surer she doesn’t like Adelaide. ”
A knock sounded at the door, and in answer to Solomon’s call, Adelaide herself entered.
She gazed only at Solomon. “You look better,” she said, “which is good. I have something to tell you.”
*
These days, Janey always seemed to come to work in a bad mood, which she hated, for she loved her work and took great pride in it. It was her new lodgings she hated. So, she tried to forget about having to go back there this evening and enjoyed being at the Silver and Grey office instead.
“Morning, Hat!” she called with assumed cheer, striding down the passage to their cubbyhole.
“Here, do you know what that bloody old bag upstairs said…” She broke off at the sight of her employer’s mother seated at Hat’s desk with a cup of tea in one gloved hand.
Oh well. Janey grinned. “Morning, Mrs. Silver. Pardon my French.”
“Fortunately, I don’t understand the language,” Mrs. Silver said comfortably.
Janey was fairly sure Constance’s mother could swear with the best of them. And probably in French, too. But she only said, “Got a cup for me, Hat?” and perched on the desk.
“Here you go,” said Hat, delivering it promptly. “Mrs. Silver’s looking for Mrs. Grey.”
The pain in the younger girl’s face told Janey that Hat was in an agonized dilemma.
She knew she wasn’t to give away her employers’ whereabouts to anyone—the one time she had done so could have led to tragedy—and yet silence seemed unnecessarily cruel to Constance’s mother, who no doubt had good reason to speak to her daughter.
The decision was now up to Janey, as Hat’s superior.
“Hat tells me she’s out of town on a case,” Mrs. Silver said, nursing her tea.
“So she is. So’s himself. Not sure when they’ll be back. Is it urgent?”
Mrs. Silver sighed. “Increasingly so. Wretched girl hasn’t been at home for days.”
“Do you want to give me a message and I’ll take it to her?” Janey offered. How far was it to Channing, and how the devil would she get there? She shouldn’t really leave Hat alone, should she?
“No, that won’t be necessary,” Mrs. Silver said, relieving Janey’s suddenly uneasy mind. “She won’t thank me for disturbing her, and I’ve no time to travel now.”
All the same, she looked so lost that Janey’s heart was touched. “Is it something we can help with? She trusts us, you know.”
Mrs. Silver smiled, which made her look suddenly very like Constance. In fact, she seemed much less outrageous in appearance than she used to. She was still colorful, eccentric, but oddly ladylike.
“Of course she trusts you,” Mrs. Silver said stoutly. “Why would she not? I would too, only it’s not that kind of a problem. Not really a problem at all.”
“Write her a letter,” Janey advised. “I’ll see she gets it. I should have written myself by now. Why don’t you use her office?”
Mrs. Silver set her cup and saucer on Hat’s desk and stood up. “Perhaps I will.”
As she vanished into Constance’s comfortable office, Hat took a letter from her desk drawer and passed it surreptitiously to Janey, as though someone might be watching.
“Came first thing,” Hat muttered. “From herself.”
Janey opened it, read it, and her bad mood vanished.
Grinning, she jumped off the desk and hurtled toward the door. “Back in a shake! Just going to send for Lenny!”
*
Solomon, who had been wondering how to extract from Adelaide whatever information she was keeping from them, was wary but hopeful. And glad she had decided to trust them.
David stood and held his chair for her. Not for the first time, Solomon wondered if he remembered such manners from his childhood, or if he had relearned them from being around him and Constance, or perhaps from his Parisian friends who seemed to have made such an impression on him.
All of those, perhaps. David observed and absorbed like a sponge.
Adelaide walked across the room and sat somewhat stiffly in David’s offered chair.
He sat beside her. Constance shifted back against the pillows beside Solomon, her shoulder warm against his arm, and it came to him that to a casual observer they could be two couples of the same family, comfortable in each other’s company.
Except that Adelaide was not comfortable at all. And David was watching her, as though willing her to lean on his strength. Had he persuaded her to talk to them? Did he know what she was going to say?
Adelaide’s hands twisted together in her lap before she deliberately loosened them. “I stayed in the house that Thursday,” she said abruptly. “As I told you. But I did see someone from the front window.”
“Percy?” Solomon asked, hoping she would say no. By what they had worked out so far, Percy had never got as far as her house that day. Unless he had gone there and then to Larchford Wood?
Adelaide shook her head. “No. I never saw Percy that day.” She drew a breath. “I saw Sir Felix Everett.”
Constance’s shoulder flexed with suppressed excitement, though she spoke calmly enough. “Was he alone? What was he doing?”
“Yes, he was alone, just walking. He came along the path from the side of the house and walked right around before heading downhill toward the canal.”
“Did you speak to him?” Solomon asked.
“No. I didn’t think he saw me. He glanced toward the house a couple of times, but I was well back from the window and he wouldn’t necessarily have known I was there.”
“Had he any reason to be on your land?”
“Not unless he was calling upon me, which he did not.”
“Did he often call?” Constance asked.
“No.” Reluctantly, it seemed, Adelaide transferred her gaze to Constance. “But he did call occasionally to discuss the boundary or church committee matters that concerned us both. He was very polite and never stayed longer than five or ten minutes.”
Solomon frowned. “Then why did you keep this from us?”
“Because I was afraid you would jump to conclusions. Because he went toward the canal, where you thought Percy was shot.”
“You think Sir Felix is guilty?”
She shook her head impatiently. “No. I think he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I didn’t want him to suffer for it.”
“You were protecting him from us. Why?”
“Because he is one of the few people here who has been kind to me. It would be a poor return for friendship to hang him out to dry for something he did not do.”
Solomon shook his head in quick irritation. “Such flimsy evidence would never get him arrested, never mind convicted.”
“I know,” she said wearily. “But at the time I had little idea how you work…”