Page 63 of Murder at the Dinner Party
Lady Whitchurch covered his hand with her own. “It’s all right, dearest. You have no reason to be ashamed.” To us, she said, “He realized when he came to me that night that he…required a more thorough understanding of…relationships. He’d heard of a woman with a certain reputation. A widow who took young gentlemen under her wing and…educated them."
“You visited a whore?” the dowager cried. “Honestly, your brother would never have needed to stoop so low.”
“She wasn’t a whore,” Lord Whitchurch growled. “She was a lady.”
“Did you pay her?”
His cheeks flamed and he turned away.
His mother gave them both a look of satisfaction, having proved her point.
It lit a fire under her daughter-in-law, albeit a small one. “That’s not all Harding told Arthur,” she said defiantly. “When Arthur asked him if he knew where Rupert was now, Harding said to ask her.” She nodded at the dowager.
“That’s the argument your staff overheard,” I said. “When you urged your mother to ‘say something,’ you wanted her to go to the police and confess that you knew the whereabouts of Rupert.”
The dowager adjusted her grip on the head of the walking stick. “Just because that man said I knew where Rupert was doesn’t mean I did.”
“You knew.”
She looked at me sharply, then narrowed her gaze. “You say that with conviction, Miss Fox. Why?”
Harry must have been worried I’d admit to finding the letters during the supposed gas leak because he spoke before I could. “You had a good relationship with Rupert. He knew you’d worry, so Miss Fox is merely guessing that he wrote to you.”
She stared at Harry then me for several moments before conceding. “He did write. He never returned to English soil, however. He died two months ago in America.”
Rupert’s last letter had a New York postmark, but it hadn’t mentioned he was ill. He’d asked for money. Begged, in fact.
“How do you know he died?” I asked. “Did an acquaintance of his write to you?”
“Nothing like that. His last letter worried me. He needed money. He sounded desperate. I was afraid he was going to return to England and claim what was rightfully his.”
“My title,” Lord Whitchurch clarified.
“He’d face a murder charge,” Harry pointed out.
Lord Whitchurch grunted. “Knowing Rupert, he’d think he could get away with it after all this time. He’d had years to make up a convincing story.”
“A story that would lay the blame at my late husband’s feet,” the dowager said. “It’s easy to blame a dead man.”
Indeed.
“After I received his letter, I employed the Pinkerton Agency to find him so that I could write and attempt to convince him to remain in hiding. They did find Rupert, but he’d died a few days earlier. A drunken accident, apparently. He fell off a railway platform and was struck by a train.”
“Do you have the agency’s report?” I asked.
“I threw it away. It was…unpleasant. Final. I’ve kept Rupert’s letters, however, if you’d like to read them.” The dowager’s gaze drilled into me. “Or is that unnecessary?”
I returned her gaze with a level one of my own. “So Rupert didn’t return to London and kill Hardy?”
“No!” Lord Whitchurch snapped. “None of us killed him. What was the point? He’d stayed silent all this time and he promised me he would continue to stay silent.”
“Why? Because you paid him with your father’s tiepin and watch?”
He huffed out a breath. “First of all, the watch is neither mine nor my father’s, nor Rupert’s. Ours are engraved with our initials. Secondly, I hadn’t seen that tiepin in years before you showed it to me. I can only assume my father was wearing it on the night of Charlotte’s murder and he removed it on a whim to pay Harding to help Rupert get away.” He looked to his mother.
She nodded. “I didn’t notice the tiepin was missing for some time, but when I did, he confessed that he’d given it to Harding. He had to pay the groom something. He assumed Harding would exchange it for a ticket to the continent, but it seems he held on to it. He must have used his own savings instead, or perhaps Rupert had money in his pockets.”
Lord Whitchurch squared up to Harry and me. “There you have it. The truth. None of us killed Charlotte or Harding. The police could charge my mother with being complicit in Rupert’s disappearance and covering up the truth, but it’s doubtful they’d arrest an elderly lady years after the event.”
