Page 52 of The Meriwell Legacy
His nonaccusatory, matter-of-fact tone drew Percy back from the brink. He immediately replied, “Because I swapped my cravat pin this morning.” He pointed into the drawer; Alaric looked inside and saw the wooden box of cravat pins and shirt studs and sundry fobs sitting at the front of the drawer, with the rest of the drawer stuffed with loose letters and notes. Percy pointed to one particular pin—a diamond set in gold. “That’s the one I’ve been wearing lately—I had it on yesterday. But this morning, I switched it for this one.” Percy jabbed a finger at the black onyx head of the pin currently anchoring the folds of his gray silk cravat. “As a sign of mourning.”
Barnaby nodded in a decisive fashion that signaled his unqualified acceptance of Percy’s explanation. “Remember I mentioned that the murderer might not burn the letters but use them for something else? He did.” Barnaby held up the sheaf of letters. “He put them in your drawer, thinking to implicate you.” Barnaby glanced at the general detritus in the drawer. “Most men don’t change their cravat pins every day—or even every week. He wouldn’t have expected you to have looked in this drawer this morning.”
“But,” Alaric said, following the same line of thought, “that means he must have put the letters here sometime between when you left the room this morning and now.”
The main door opened.
Barnaby and Alaric walked back to the archway and saw Stokes follow Penelope and Constance into the room.
Three pairs of eyes locked on the bundle in Barnaby’s hand.
Stokes humphed. “We were coming to tell you the letters were tied with yellow ribbon.”
“Canary-yellow ribbon, to be precise,” Penelope said. “But you’ve already found them.”
Constance came forward and took the letters from Barnaby, who handed them over without quibble. Constance pulled the ribbon bow undone, then started flicking through the letters.
Alaric went to look over her shoulder. When she glanced at him, he explained, “I know Percy’s hand.”
Stokes and Penelope outlined what they’d learned from Mrs. Macomber. “So there’s definitely the possibility of letters from Wynne, Walker, and Fletcher. Those were the three Mrs. Macomber said were most attentive prior to Percy capturing Glynis’s interest.”
“Except,” Constance said, looking up from the sheaf of letters she’d made her way through, “these are all in one hand.”
“They’re all from Percy,” Alaric verified.
Constance hesitated, then she gathered the letters, retied the ribbon, and offered the bundle to Percy. “Here. Best put them somewhere else.”
Percy took them and thanked her in a choked voice.
Barnaby then explained how Percy—under Barnaby’s eye—had discovered the letters and what the timing of their appearance in the tallboy drawer meant.
Stokes looked enthused. “This is a chance we can’t afford to pass up. Clearly, those letters were placed in Percy’s room by the murderer to divert our investigation and paint Percy as the killer. If we can find which guest came up to this floor, to this room, between the time Percy left it and now, we’ll either have our man or at least reduce our suspect list substantially.”
No one argued.
Penelope narrowed her eyes. “The critical time period is, in fact, shorter than that.” She looked at Barnaby and Stokes. “We held all the guests in the drawing room for most of the morning—from the time we arrived, which was nine-thirty, more or less on the dot.”
“True.” Barnaby looked at Percy. “What time did you go down this morning?”
“Just after eight o’clock,” Percy replied. “And Carnaby can tell you that most of the guests were already down and at breakfast when I reached the dining room.”
Constance and Alaric both murmured agreement. “Most came down in good time,” Constance said.
“They wanted to speculate on how your interviews would be run and what they might expect,” Alaric dryly added.
“So if our murderer wasn’t among those already down, he had an hour or so’s opportunity then,” Penelope said. “We didn’t release the guests from the drawing room until after eleven o’clock, and luncheon was served at twelve-thirty, so that was another hour during which he might have slipped up to Percy’s room.”
“After that, however,” Alaric said, “everyone went outside. Most if not all congregated on the croquet lawn, and they’re still there.”
“So,” Stokes said, busily jotting in his notebook, “we have two approximately hour-long windows of opportunity during which the murderer might have planted the letters in here. Beyond those times, he would have had to slip away from the assembled guests—which would increase the likelihood of him being observed leaving or having his absence noted.”
“Yes, and since the guests repaired to the croquet lawn, Alaric and I, and more recently you four as well, have been rushing about the corridors up here,” Constance pointed out. “Yet we haven’t glimpsed anyone—especially not any gentleman—slinking about.”
“He wouldn’t slink,” Stokes said. “As cool as he is, he would stride along as if his purpose was completely innocent.”
“There was that half hour while we were out under the oak,” Percy put in. “Whoever he is, he could have noticed us, slipped away from the others, and planted the letters then.”
The others all looked at him, then Stokes grunted. “Good point.” He made another note.
