Page 58 of The Meriwell Legacy
He fell in beside Percy. “Any advance?”
Barnaby waggled his head. “In a way—yes.”
“But in general,” Stokes grumbled, “no.”
Alaric looked inquiringly at Percy, but he only grimaced and shook his head.
Barnaby glanced at Alaric. “You?”
He raised his brows in frustrated resignation. “Yes and no sums it up all too aptly.”
Stokes snorted.
As they neared the oak, they spotted the two ladies waiting in the deep shade. The four men ducked under the branches and immediately saw from both Penelope’s and Constance’s expressions that they had had better luck.
“What?’ Stokes asked.
Penelope all but jigged with eager earnestness; Constance, Alaric noted, was rather more contained, yet was also distinctly enthused.
“First,” Penelope said, “did anyone learn anything regarding who might have put the letters in Percy’s room? We didn’t—not the faintest hint of a clue.”
Stokes grunted. “We, too, got nowhere as to the letters.” He looked at Alaric. “You?”
“Since breakfast, at least four men left the rest of the company at some point and went upstairs alone. Walker immediately after breakfast, Wynne later, after you’d released the guests from the drawing room, then Fletcher immediately after lunch, and lastly Edward just before the company went outside.” Alaric paused, then disgruntledly continued, “That said, as Monty pointed out, at various times, others drifted here and there—some off to smoke a cheroot, for instance—and they could have gone upstairs unnoticed by the other guests.” Alaric looked around the circle of faces. “Trying to identify who put the letters in Percy’s room is—”
“Not really a viable way forward,” Penelope concluded.
Several gave vent to frustrated sounds, but no one disagreed.
Stokes glanced at Alaric. “While I agree with our general consensus, those four definites—Walker, Wynne, Fletcher, and Mandeville—keep cropping up.”
“If only one of them would crop up without the others,” Barnaby dryly observed, “we might have a chance of solving this case.”
“Hmm. Yes, well, on to what else we discovered.” Behind the lenses of her spectacles, Penelope’s eyes gleamed. “From one of the maids, we learned more about what Rosa must have seen in the night.” She glanced at Percy. “Incidentally, what we heard makes it impossible that it was you Rosa saw. She definitely saw the murderer.”
Percy frowned. “Are you sure?”
Penelope lifted her gaze to his hair. “As sure as you are a very fair blond. Despite the poor light, Rosa would have seen your hair and recognized you. None of the other gentlemen have such fair hair—the closest is a mid-brown, which would look darker, not lighter, in poor light. We also went over all Rosa herself said, and one thing we can now be sure of is that Rosa saw the murderer leave the shrubbery.
“Then,” Penelope continued, “adding everything together—what Rosa might have seen of the murderer and what Constance can remember of the incident when Rosa turned faint after seeing the gentlemen leave the billiard room, presumably inadvertently alerting the murderer so that he realized she had—or was close to—recognizing him, we’re now as certain as we can be that the murderermusthave been one of the last men to quit the billiard room. He had to have been at the rear of the group—and we believe Rosa recognized him, or suspected it was he, based on the way he resettles his coat.”
“We think,” Constance said, “that in the corridor, she saw him perform the exact same action as he had when he left the shrubbery after strangling Glynis—settling his coat’s shoulders and sleeves in some distinctive way.”
“But the most important actual fact,” Penelope stated, “is that given the timing of Rosa’s reaction and her relative height, then the man she reacted to had to have been one of the last to walk out of the billiard room.”
“They—the men—were walking two and three abreast,” Constance said. “So say the last five or six. He had to have been one of them.”
Stokes studied Constance’s and Penelope’s eager faces, then humphed. “As it happens, that’s much the same conclusion we reached after speaking with the footman who was in the corridor at that time, waiting to go into the billiard room.”
“Although you’ve narrowed it down further,” Barnaby said. “We assumed it was a man toward the rear of the group, but from what you say, I agree he’s likely to have been one of the last five or six.”
Alaric exchanged a look with Percy.
Percy deflated. “I was at the head of the pack—and you were with me, weren’t you?”
Alaric pulled a face. “I was.” He looked at Stokes. “And I have absolutely no idea who was at the rear.”
Penelope exhaled, then arched a brow at Constance. “Do you think there’s any chance the ladies flanking Rosa—Mrs. Collard and Mrs. Finlayson—might have noticed which gentlemen were at the rear of the pack?”
