Chapter Eleven
Kate was heading determinedly for Lord Chadbon’s study when she came upon the housekeeper leaning over the banister, unmoving.
“Mrs. Thornfield? Are you well?”
Startled, the woman straightened, patting her cap in embarrassment. “Oh, Lady Ambrose! Yes, of course. Just daydreaming when I should be busy!” She made to move away immediately, but Kate stood in her way.
“I don’t think you were daydreaming,” Kate said shrewdly. “I think you were worrying. About whomever you saw downstairs.”
Mrs. Thornfield glanced over her shoulder in alarm. “Oh no. They are all good workers, and I stand by all the servants here.”
“Of course you do. Worrying is hardly accusing.”
“True.” A quick, grateful smile flickered on the housekeeper’s lips and vanished.
“So, who is concerning you? Truly, if it is anything to do with Dinah, you must tell me. I won’t act in any way against anyone unless I know”—Kate lowered her voice further—“unless I know that they killed her.”
At this reminder of the violence that had been done, Mrs. Thornfield blanched, touching her cheeks with her closed fists.
“Dear God, nothing like that!” she whispered.
“Then what?”
Mrs. Thornfield twisted her hands in the fabric of her skirts. “I’m worried about Lewis,” she confided at last. “He was terribly devoted to Dinah, and I don’t believe for a moment that he would ever have hurt her. But I found him in the maids’ dormitory yesterday, searching her things.”
Kate blinked. Her euphoria about Rupert’s proven innocence began to slip into a very different suspicion. “What for?”
“A memento, he said. Something to remember her by. But he should have asked me. Her family won’t want her few bits and pieces—they’ve no value. In such circumstances, I’d divide them among her friends. I gave him a handkerchief, and he seemed pleased enough by that.”
“Yet you’re still worried,” Kate said.
“I am. Because he is. He’s not concentrating on his work and he’s beginning to look positively ill.
I know grief gets some people that way, but I’m so afraid he—” Mrs. Thornfield broke off abruptly, perhaps seeing Kate’s expression.
“No, no! I’m not afraid he harmed Dinah.
I’m afraid he took her necklace before I found him. ”
“Necklace?” Kate repeated, bewildered.
“She wore it all the time. She liked to show it off, but I wouldn’t let her wear it except on her days off. Pretty little trinket, pure silver, depicting a dancer. She was very proud of it. But it wasn’t in her drawer, and it didn’t come back with her clothes.”
“So you’re afraid Lewis took it?”
“If his conscience is pricking him, it would explain a lot.”
Kate nodded sympathetically. “You are in a difficult position,” she agreed. “You don’t want to accuse him, but at the same time, you can’t let it pass. If it turns out he took it, you would have to dismiss him.”
“Kemp would.”
Kate said, “I am not so burdened with duty. Perhaps you would send Lewis to speak to me, and I’ll see what I can get out of him. Perhaps we can deal with it quietly.”
Mrs. Thornfield glanced at her with a hint of defiance. “For Lady Chadbon’s sake, I suppose?”
“For all our sakes.”
The housekeeper thought, then inhaled sharply. “Very well. Come to my sitting room. I’ll send him in to you in private.”
Mrs. Thornfield’s sitting room was just past the baize door, so they did not have to go through the kitchen under the eyes of servants. It was a cozy, comfortable room with an armchair and a desk, shelves for account books, and a rug before the lit fire in the hearth.
Kate sat down and waited, though not for long. Only a couple of minutes after leaving her there, Mrs. Thornfield returned with the young footman, Lewis, and left him there.
“Just the man I wanted to see,” Kate said pleasantly.
“Can’t think why, my lady,” Lewis said boldly.
“Can’t you? I suspect you can, but I’ll tell you anyway. I need to know why you were rifling through Dinah’s things.”
“I told Mrs. Thornfield already. She gave me what I wanted, a memento of Dinah.” He even pulled a folded cotton handkerchief from his pocket to show her.
“Then why are you still so anxious?”
“’Cause she’s still dead,” Lewis retorted.
Kate regarded him. “Do you know how Dinah died, Lewis?”
“She collapsed.”
“She did.” Anyone would have under the circumstances. “Lewis, did Dinah steal the dagger from Lord Chadbon’s study?”
His mouth fell open. Whatever he had expected her to say, it wasn’t that. Although it didn’t make her accusation untrue.
“Of course she did not!”
“She was responsible for cleaning the room. The fact is, the dagger went missing, and she was the person most likely to have taken it.”
“Nonsense!” he said, then blushed fierily. “That is, she didn’t, my lady. She weren’t that daft.”
Kate held his gaze. “Then who was? It was gone by early afternoon, when Mr. and Mrs. Otteridge arrived. Did you go into the study that day?”
He glared at her, clearly about to deny it. Then she all but saw his brain working. He swallowed twice. “Yes, I did. I took the dagger that afternoon.”
“When that afternoon?” Kate demanded.
“Before tea. Around three, maybe.”
“Did Dinah find out and take it from you?”
He shook his head, and suddenly his face was defiant and, she thought ruefully, honest.
“No. I gave it to Dinah, just to show off. And so she could protect herself.”
“Protect herself?” Kate pounced. “From what? From whom?”
“I don’t know,” he said grimly. “She wouldn’t tell me, but I could see she was worried by someone in the house.”
“Worried enough to take the dagger from you?” Kate asked. This was surely the worst possible scenario.
Lewis nodded miserably. “Not to steal it! Neither of us meant to steal. It was only for a couple of days until…until she felt better.”
Or until Lord Chadbon’s guests had gone. Which one had upset Dinah to such an extent?
“But she took the dagger from you? She was that frightened?”
“Or that furious with me. She told me I was an idiot and snatched it from me. Put in her apron pocket and stalked off. But it wasn’t there when she died, was it?
Or someone would have accused her of thieving.
So I went to get it back from her cupboard in the maids’ dormitory, which is where I though she must have put it.
That’s what I was doing when Mrs. Thornfield found me there. ”
“But you didn’t find it, did you?”
He shook his head. “She wasn’t stealing it. Neither was I.”
“Maybe you should have picked a kitchen knife.” Though it would still have killed Dinah just as easily.
Lewis looked at her as though she were mad. “Without Cook noticing and raising a rumpus?”
It was almost laughable. Lord Chadbon could have noticed his dagger was missing at any time.
That he hadn’t was surely testament to his distraction over this gathering.
Or perhaps his staff understood him better than his friends did.
Chadbon wasn’t really a serious collector.
His little display was merely a talking point that he used to break the ice or show off to his guests and then forgot about.
Kate said, “You can stop worrying. Lord Chadbon has his dagger back. I don’t believe anyone will blame either of you. But Lewis, whom was she protecting herself from?”
“I don’t know,” he said fiercely. “I wish I did. I’d have—”
“Mrs. Thornfield would have put a stop to it,” Kate interrupted.
“If she could,” Lewis said darkly. “But there were people outside this household who wished her ill. She had an admirer, someone she met outside. I don’t know who. But something was going on that worried her. She wouldn’t tell me. Why wouldn’t she tell anyone?”
The hurt in his voice was palpable. There was nothing Kate could say to ease that for him. So she just nodded. “Thank you, Lewis.”
Dismissed, he still hesitated. His expression was uneasy, even downright morose, but behind it was understanding and a hint of hope. Because Kate had asked these questions, not his own superiors.
“If they find out, I’ll be dismissed,” he blurted. “Dinah wouldn’t have wanted that.”
Clever, Kate thought. She held his gaze. “Mrs. Thornfield is not concerned with the dagger, but with the necklace.”
He frowned. “The dancer? I didn’t take that. I told Mrs. Thornfield so.”
She believed him. He had already admitted to taking the dagger, after all. He had nothing to lose. She nodded to release him and he strode out of the room.
Kate continued to sit where she was, her hands clenching and unclenching. Damn, damn, damn and blast it all to perdition.
The dagger being gone before Rupert’s arrival that evening did not prove his innocence after all. It didn’t prove anyone’s innocence, if Dinah had carried it and the killer had simply taken it from her.
*
Overwhelmed by possibilities and annoying facts, Kate went to her room and began to write down everything she knew about the murder, the timing, the weapon, and where everyone had been when it happened.
There was nothing in any of it to prove who killed Dinah.
Not even to prove that Rupert had not. What did seem fantastic was that Dinah should carry her employer’s dagger—leaving herself and Lewis open to dismissal for theft—around with her for several hours just in case she was attacked.
Who on earth could have frightened her so much?
Everyone else had arrived at the house around the same time and just before Kate did, so she couldn’t even narrow down which of the guests had scared the maid.
It was also possible that Lewis had simply misunderstood Dinah’s increasing worry over her condition. And that Dinah had just forgotten about the dagger in her apron pocket.