Page 57 of A Ruse of Shadows
“It does make sense, not to use either her own or Mr. Underwood’s name on the lease,” continued Mrs. Watson, “if they wanted to keep her new location hush-hush. And it also makes sense, I suppose, that Lord Bancroft kept his name out of any documents to do with the villa, if he didn’t want the crown to notice the extent of his personal assets.”
With Lord Ingram’s hamper of foodstuff on a diplomatic tour in Paris—perhaps having already perished in the line of duty—Mrs. Watson had acquired a few tins of biscuits. Miss Charlotte opened a tin on the sideboard and took one out.
But she only held it. The sight made Mrs. Watson uneasy. She was much more accustomed to the girl eating and thinking at the same time, not staring through a perfectly good disk of butter, sugar, and flour.
“Do you think we can find Mrs. Claiborne, given that we know she stopped to post a letter in Sittingbourne?” she asked.
They had mounted a similar search in Cornwall earlier this year. Well, perhaps not entirely similar, but they had prowled a number of railway stations up and down a branch line and eventually found a carriage they had been looking for. Except this time they weren’t looking for a carriage, liable to be parked for hours, even days, in the same place. But a person—a person in hiding, no less.
Miss Charlotte shook her head. Her face, reflected in the mirror above the sideboard, was grave, almost grim. “I’m not sure we should pursue Mrs. Claiborne’s whereabouts. We know now that Mr. Underwood was in real danger, and it behooves us to think twice before running the risk of bringing those who might wish to harm Mrs. Claiborne to her doorstep.”
A year ago, when Miss Charlotte had been new to both detection and the greater dangers of the world, she had inadvertently brought a tail to her half brother’s doorstep.
Mrs. Watson immediately nodded in accord and regretted that she’d made the suggestion without thinking the matter through.
“But that isn’t the only reason I am unlikely to search for her,” said Miss Charlotte’s reflection in the mirror. “She could have had something to do with Mr. Underwood’s death.”
Mrs. Watson, who had just opened a biscuit tin herself, snapped the lid shut again. She was still not accustomed to think of a pretty, seemingly helpless woman as a perpetrator. “Right,” she mumbled. “There’s that also.”
“And—” Miss Charlotte began, but she was interrupted by someone at the street entrance.
The lively knocks were followed by a woman’s happy voice. “Mrs. Beaumont, are you home? It’s Miss Harcourt!”
?It took Mrs. Watson a moment to remember Miss Harcourt. The Christmas Eve Murder. The victim’s niece.
“Shall we pretend that no one is home?” whispered Mrs. Watson to Miss Charlotte.
The latter glanced at the clock. “We can receive her, but I’ll need to change my clothes and hair to look older.”
The Mrs. Beaumont who had visited Miss Harcourt in Oxfordshire had been a woman in her mid-thirties, her age set to be a few years younger than Mrs. Meadows’s so that Miss Charlotte, who had learned a great deal from Mrs. Watson, could embody her without resorting to heavy makeup or prosthetics.
“All right,” said Mrs. Watson. “I’ll let her in and tell her you’ll be back soon.”
Miss Harcourt, instead of feeling disappointed that Mrs. Beaumont hadn’t come back yet, was delighted to be admitted. “It’s much too forward for me to call without prior notice, but I happened to be due in London anyway, and I really wished to see Mrs. Beaumont!”
Mrs. Watson, having in short order taken on the identity of Mrs. Beaumont’s companion, rang for tea and explained that she’d have traveled with Mrs. Beaumont to Miss Harcourt’s estate the other day had Mrs. Beaumont not given her leave to visit some elderly relatives.
After a while, their topic turned to Mrs. Meadows, the vanished widow who had long fascinated the Harcourt women.
Mrs. Watson decided she might as well give in to her nosiness. “Thanks to Mrs. Beaumont, I have now become highly intrigued by Mrs. Meadows. Mrs. Beaumont has fretted over whether her friend was satisfied with her marriage—whether she loved her husband. But do you think, Miss Harcourt, that Mr. Victor Meadows loved his wife?”
Miss Harcourt’s countenance lost some of its native cheer. She glanced in the direction of the street entrance and said quickly, “Because of Mrs. Beaumont’s recent visit, I went into the box of diaries my mother had left behind and found something I didn’t know existed—a notebook in which she kept a record of everything having to do with the murder.”
“Oh my,” murmured Mrs. Watson.
“She was most knowledgeable about the murder, my mother,” saidMiss Harcourt. “In fact, she used to wonder why the police inspector didn’t investigate her more thoroughly, as she was the only one who benefited from it.
“But I digress. The final entry in the notebook came five years after the murder, when my mother was getting ready to sell the factories she’d inherited from my uncle Victor. She had to spend a great deal of time sorting through years of paperwork related to the business and, in that effort, came across evidence that my uncle Victor might have been in part responsible for Mrs. Meadows’s father’s bankruptcy.”
Mrs. Watson covered the lower half of her face with both hands. The possibility had occurred to her and to Miss Charlotte, but it would have been staggering to Mrs. Beaumont’s companion.
“I was appalled,” continued Miss Harcourt, her voice tight. “But the evidence was inconclusive, and I really shouldn’t have said anything—in fact, I mean to keep it from Mrs. Beaumont. She adored Mrs. Meadows.”
“Oh, my dear, but you adored her, too.”
“I know.” Miss Harcourt gripped her hands together. “Which is why I’m desperately hoping for that not to have been true but only another theory born of my mother’s fertile imagination.”
Mrs. Watson removed her hands from her face only to gasp aloud. “But—but wouldn’t that undermine the premise that Mrs. Meadows had no reason to kill her husband?”
