Chapter Twenty-One #2
“Janey. It’s not about roofs. It’s about you and me. You brought me back to life from a very low place and you never gave up, even knowing the worst. I never met anyone like you. I love you.”
“Oh, Lenny.” Her voice broke. “You don’t have to say these things to me. I know what I am—”
“No you don’t,” he said fiercely. “You’re warm and kind and funny and beautiful—”
“I ain’t beautiful!”
“You’re beautiful.” He lifted his hand to cup her cheek, and the tenderness brought tears to her eyes.
“I ain’t got much, Janey, but my business is growing, and I get the extra work with Silver and Grey.
We could manage. We could be happy together, couldn’t we?
I’ll do my best to make you so. Please marry me, Janey. ”
The dam burst when his mouth touched hers, a flood of tears spilling over her cheeks, his fingers, their lips. He drew back, appalled by what he had done.
With a sob, Janey threw her arms around his neck and dragged him back to her.
This kiss was long and fierce and told her everything she needed to know.
*
The next morning, Constance and Solomon woke early, and pored over the case notes as Constance updated them.
“Penelope was too appalled at shooting you,” Constance said. “I don’t believe she can have killed Percy, even to save her virtue. Apart from anything else, she’s so poor a shot, she’d probably have missed! Unless she shot from point-blank range.”
“And her father?” Solomon said thoughtfully.
“I don’t think we can rule him out. He owns the pistol. He saw Percy try to assault his daughter. And though he claims to have been visiting patients in the poorer part of Channing, no one saw him there. I think we need to get names and addresses from him, then visit the supposed patients.”
Solomon nodded. “Good plan. We need to check Everett’s alibi too. Though perhaps we should speak to Harris first. He and Flynn and Wills might have covered all that between them.”
“Which would leave us where?” Constance asked, frowning.
Solomon drew in a breath. “With Adelaide. She, of all people, seems to have the best motive. Except…”
“Except?” Constance prompted him.
“Except I find it hard to believe she would do it and then lie. Not after she told us the truth about Everett’s devotion.”
“She is loyal,” Constance allowed. “To you and to those who stand by her. She would not lie to you, unless…”
“What?”
“If she is tried and found guilty, she will likely hang. Leaving her son without a mother. If any loyalty takes precedence over you, it is to Clarence. It’s the simplest solution, Sol.” And yet she didn’t quite believe it. She didn’t want to, for Adelaide’s sake, and Clarence’s. And David’s.
And Sol’s.
He said, “Something is missing. Something we don’t know, or something we’re not seeing. This has always been about Adelaide, and yet I don’t believe she did it.”
“Which leaves Everett, Owens, and West. We’ve been rather forgetting about West. To say nothing of this underworld character from London.” She groaned. “Are we any further forward than when we first found the body?”
*
Constance had given voice to a lowering thought lurking at the back of Solomon’s mind. They knew their suspects a little better and had a vague idea of Percy’s surreptitious movements on his return from London, but that was all.
Solomon was aware of all too many distractions in this case—his initial worry about Constance’s health and secrecy, the wonder of approaching parenthood, even the old emotions stirred up by Adelaide’s presence here.
If neither he nor Constance were concentrating fully on the case, if other things had grown more important, then they deserved their first failure.
Maybe it was time to walk away from Silver and Grey.
But not in the middle of the mystery. If witnesses did not answer—or did not have the answers to—their questions, then they needed to rethink the questions. Or just think…
Both the Harveys sat at the breakfast table when he and Constance entered. They looked solemn, and he remembered with a jolt that the funeral was today. The sheer tragedy of burying one’s own child overwhelmed him.
“There is a letter for Mrs. Grey,” Mrs. Harvey told them. “I put it by your place. Let me pour you a cup of tea.”
“Thank you,” Constance said, going toward the table at once, while Solomon filled plates from the sideboard. “It’s probably from our assistant in…” She trailed off, frowning, and picked up the letter.
The kitchen had already provided a slice of toast with their early tea, so she had got over her morning nausea.
“Not from Janey?” Solomon asked, carrying plates to the table and sitting beside her. It was probably too early to expect answers from that part of the investigation.
Constance shook her head. “No, it’s from my mother. Janey sent it on…” She read quickly, reaching for her teacup, then let out a startled exclamation and almost dropped the cup. “Oh, Juliet!”
Solomon’s stomach twisted. The mother and daughter frequently annoyed each other, so such outbursts were hardly rare, but there was real fear in Constance’s voice.
“What has she done now?” he asked as lightly as he could.
She raised her eyes to his, her lips parted in shock. “She says she is getting married.”
Solomon’s eyebrows flew up. “Kellar?”
“Who else?” She dropped the letter in front of him.
Sebastian Kellar was an ambiguous, even mysterious character, a diplomat who had helped them in Venice and whom they had suspected as a murderer in a subsequent case.
That he had an incomprehensible past with Constance’s far-from-respectable mother had not made that case any easier to solve.
But he had proved his worth in several ways, not least in bringing Juliet a new kind of happiness.
They were frequently in each other’s company.
“Well, it is hardly a surprise, is it?” Solomon said, struggling to understand his wife’s attitude to the wedding.
“No,” Constance said bitterly, “but she doesn’t need to do it tomorrow!”
“Tomorrow?” Solomon repeated. “Well, you can take the carriage home today…”
They had made no effort to hide their conversation, and the Harveys were glancing from one to the other with some bemusement.
“For such a purpose I release you from our agreement,” Harvey said. “So you may both go to the wedding. We have the London detectives looking into Percy now.”
“Thank you,” Constance said firmly. “But that won’t be necessary.”
She was silent during their brief breakfast and only burst into words as she and Solomon all but marched into town.
“It’s too soon! He has been back in her life—what?—two months? Three? How can she know him? How can she know he will be faithful or make her happy for longer than a few weeks? How can she trust him? We know he is ambiguous, to say the least! She needs to—”
“Constance.” He took her hand, threading it through his arm. “You said yourself she was happy.”
“A moment, Sol, one moment! This is the rest of her life!”
“Her life,” Solomon said mildly. “Would you have paid attention if she had tried to stop you marrying me?”
Constance gave a quick, twisted smile. “She didn’t believe you would marry me.”
“She threatened me against mistreating you in any way. Go and threaten Kellar if it makes you feel better.”
She swallowed. “You are making fun of me.”
He patted her hand. “No.”
She shook her head. “It’s too soon.”
“Don’t you think they’ve spent long enough apart? Why should they waste their later years?”
She glared at him. “Why are you so damned reasonable?”
“Because we need our minds on the case. And yours isn’t. Go home. Threaten Kellar, and dance at your mother’s wedding. She wants you there.”
“So much so that she gave me a whole day’s notice.” She drew in a breath and blew it into the breeze. “You are right, of course. We need our minds on the case, both our minds.”
And from that, she would not be moved.
They called first on Dr. Owens, who, although on his way out on his calls, returned with them to his consulting rooms, his face flushed with mortification.
“Penelope told me what she did. I can only add my apologies to hers. I have never been so furious and ashamed and appalled. But you must believe she never intended to hurt you or anyone else. And I hope you do not imagine that she had anything to do with Percy’s murder…”
“Where was she that afternoon?” Solomon asked briskly.
“With me, in the poorer parts of the town. I visited the sick while she delivered medicines and looked in on the convalescing.”
“Which of you had the gig?” Solomon asked.
“I did. She is young and walks faster than I.”
“You do not worry leaving her to walk alone in those streets?” Constance asked.
“No,” Owens said with dignity. “Everyone there knows her as they know me. No one would hurt the doctor’s daughter.”
“We would like to rule her out as a suspect,” Solomon said. “Please write down for us the names and addresses of everyone both of you visited that afternoon.”
Owens drew himself up, clearly about to refuse. Then, his gaze skimming over Solomon’s bandage, he sighed and reached for his appointment book.
Five minutes later, armed with his list, they left him and walked briskly toward the poorer streets. To save time, they split the names between them.
It took them the rest of the morning, and they missed Percy’s funeral, both the church service and the burial.
“But with luck we can speak to the guests at Channing House,” Constance said. “It makes a difference knowing both Owenses are innocent.”
Solomon paused, gazing blindly across the churchyard. “It does… Both of them were where they said they were, but neither of them saw the vicar in that part of town.”
His own words came back to him. “It has always been about Adelaide.”
Adelaide, the beautiful widow pursued in different ways by the single gentlemen of the neighborhood—or at least by Percy and Everett. If Owens looked, he did not seem to pursue.
But the vicar, Ellis Thomas, was also a gentle, single man who must have noticed her attractions as well as the injustice of the Harveys’ treatment of her.