Chapter Five #2
There had been a footman at the drawing room door, she remembered with triumph.
That was whom she needed to speak to! In fact, although she paid little attention at the time, she thought that footman was Lewis, who had been quarreling with Irwin the coachman and who had been very attached to Dinah.
Surely he would have noticed who had gone in and out of the drawing room that evening.
Not that Kate truly suspected one of the Chadbons’ guests of murdering a maid.
They were all respectable people with everything to lose in a blast of scandal.
Besides, she could think of no possible reason.
Any misconduct with the maids would be covered up by the dismissal of the girl in question, while her seducer walked free.
It was the way of the world, however unjust.
And yet these same guests—with the possible exception of the Nyes—would have been frequent visitors at Chadbon House in London, where they would almost certainly have encountered the decorative Dinah.
What if one of these men were responsible for Dinah’s child?
What if she had been desperate enough to threaten them in some way? Even to try to extort money?
Speculation. She had no real idea what sort of person Dinah was. She could and would ask the servants, of course, but it was Rupert she really needed to talk to.
Grissy entered the room with a cheerful greeting and set about choosing a more suitable gown for tea. Kate watched her, plotting.
“What?” Grissy asked, scowling with all the familiarity of a servant who had known her mistress since childhood.
“Are you very tired, Grissy?”
“Tired? Course not. Less to do in someone else’s house, isn’t there?”
“Then you’ll be up to a walk later?”
“Where to?” Grissy asked suspiciously. “When?”
“Along some country roads. After midnight, probably, when everyone else is asleep.”
Grissy groaned. “Oh no! Seriously? Miss Kate, you’re a married lady! You can’t get up to mischief with his young lordship anymore!”
To her annoyance, Kate felt herself blushing. “Who said anything about any young lordship?”
“The curate, then, though if you ask me, he’s up to something, playing such a part.”
“Well, if you won’t come with me, at least make sure there’s a lantern by the side door.”
Grissy eyed her with dislike. “You know I won’t let you go alone. Or stay out late, mind you. We’re to go back to London tomorrow.”
“Ah. About that. We may stay on for a few days. I need to help Lady Chadbon with something.”
“Does his nibs know?”
Kate could never cure Grissy of referring to her master in such terms. In truth, there seemed to be no malice behind it. “I shall write to Sir Gilbert, of course.”
“And if he’s relying on you to be home?” Grissy asked.
“He isn’t,” Kate said with certainty. Gilbert was not a man of impulse. Since Parliament was not sitting, no emergencies would occur, and he had given her no tasks beyond the matter of Nye and maintaining the coalition of support for his returning soldiers bill.
She stuffed the paper she had been writing on into the desk drawer and rose to change into the simple white gown with the blue embroidery at its high waist and sleeves.
Grissy handed her the shawl of the same shade of blue, and although it was still early for tea, she went downstairs.
No one was in the ground-floor hall, so she walked straight through to the orangery.
For a moment, she sat in the chair Rupert had occupied during their conversation last night and gazed out of the window.
Remington was right. Rupert should have seen the attack on Dinah.
Although nighttime, even with strong moonlight, did distort what one could see through glass.
He claimed to have been looking at the sky, and thinking.
What had been so preoccupying that he had neither seen nor heard a murderous attack?
It must surely have been very quick and very silent. Which she supposed was a good thing for Dinah, if the poor girl had to die.
She shivered and jumped up to open the orangery doors to the garden. She could still see where the body had lain, for the grass was still depressed all around the area, where many feet had also fallen that evening.
There’s no blood, she thought suddenly. According to Dr. Paxton, the knife had prevented the heart’s blood from escaping outside the body.
Instead, she had bled internally. So the killer would not have been covered in his victim’s blood.
Therefore, Rupert’s freedom from bloodstains was no proof of his innocence.
Kate looked toward the house, wondering where exactly Dinah had come from, and what had led her to that precise spot.
She must have come through that door in the wall, although her direct path to the orangery, where she was supposed to meet Rupert, would have been directly along the right-hand path, not to the left in among the bushes and trees that lined the wall.
Unless she was hiding… Had she heard something and taken fright?
Hidden so that she was not seen shirking her duties?
Behind the plain tree would have seemed a good place—only, what if that was where her murderer had been waiting?
The grass was scuffed and worn down around the tree too, although not to the extent, surely, of a major scuffle.
So little to show for such a vile, heinous act…
If the killer had indeed lain in wait for Dinah, then he must have known of her assignation with Rupert.
Or had he just crept after her out of the same door?
Kate thought of the girl alone and seeking help, startled and frightened by some sudden noise, hiding from the one man who might have saved her, and walking straight into the arms of her murderer.
Since Rupert had heard nothing, the killer must have actually lowered her body gently to the ground, not let it fall with a bump that might well have attracted the curate’s attention.
Her clothes had not been disordered by a struggle.
In fact, she had looked almost prim, lying there…
Kate walked to the door in the wall and opened it. She found herself among a vast array of washing hung out to dry around a big flagstone square. Slipping between damp tablecloths, towels, and aprons, she found herself gazing at a door into the house. She lifted the latch and went inside.
She was in a laundry room, full of large tubs, most of them currently empty of water, though some containing yet more cloths and towels awaiting attention.
Through the half-open laundry door, she could hear a woman’s voice, no doubt the cook’s, issuing orders and scoldings among the clatter of activity.
She could almost see Dinah, sliding in here from the kitchen, perhaps with a few items for washing, and, instead of rushing back to work, hurrying outside via the laundry door, through the drying yard to the garden, and to the orangery where Rupert awaited her. Only she had never gotten there.
Kate turned away and left the way she had come.
Her skin prickled, as though she were walking to her own doom in Dinah’s shoes.
Poor Dinah… She glanced nervously around the drying yard and tangled herself in a sheet.
Silly panic arose as she fought her way free.
She tried to laugh at herself, but the sense of danger did not leave her as she escaped into the walled garden, her gaze flying instantly to the plain tree and the place Dinah had died.
Yes, this must have been the route Dinah had taken to her death.
But what of her killer? Was he—or she—truly a member of this household, however temporarily?
Could someone else have climbed over the wall?
A vagrant, as Mrs. Thornfield had suggested?
The father of Dinah’s child eliminating a problem?
Some other jealous suitor or betrayed lover, or someone whose secrets Dinah had learned and meant to use to her own benefit?
She must have been desperate after all, unmarried and with child, and about to be turned off without a character.
She could not afford the luxury of scruples…
Neither could Rupert. He had to be made to talk to her.
In the meantime, she had to banish Dinah from her mind and go and be charming at tea with Lady Chadbon and her guests.
There was bound to be someone whose wavering support needed stiffening, someone whose doubts held out against the intensity of Chadbon’s pressure.
Gilbert regarded her as his secret weapon, so she must not lose sight of her task in all of this…
*
It was more than an hour before Kate could escape from tea, for it turned out that Mrs. Otteridge had imagined some slight by Sir Colin Nye and was urging her husband to have nothing more to do with the man.
It took all of Lord Chadbon’s charm and authority to convince Otteridge that in matters of state he had to rise above the personal and the petty, and a good deal of Kate’s patience to advise Mrs. Otteridge how to rise above Nye’s unconscionable rudeness to her and thereby win the war.
The alliance remained intact, although Kate’s nerves were ready to snap.
Once again, she felt more like a nursemaid than the great political hostess Gilbert wished her to be.
Finally, she escaped and, with a brief nod to Lord Chadbon standing by the library door, hurried downstairs in search of fresh air.
A liveried footman, sitting morosely in the porter’s box by the front door, sprang to his feet as she strode across the hall. Only then did she recognize Lewis, whom she had last noticed arguing with the head coachman outside his cottage.
She slowed as he moved to open the front door for her. “Thought I’d take a little air,” she said vaguely.
“Yes, my lady.”
“You’re Lewis, aren’t you?”
“Yes, my lady.”
“Well, I think you might be able to help. Lady Chadbon will be writing personally to poor Dinah’s family, and she wants the facts at her fingertips, as it were, as well as a sense of her character.”