Page 28 of A Captain, a Corpse, and Miss Bridges
“Not for me,” Mrs Bridges sighed, placing her needlework back in its basket. “I want to go out and check on the hens before the storm.”
Flora glanced out the window in confusion; the sky was a clear, bright blue.
“I can feel it in my bones,” Mrs Bridges said crossly in response to her sceptical look. She rose from her seat, took her shawl from the back of the chair, and departed through the back door with a cheery wave to the captain.
“As a captain, I often changed our course based only on a twinge from my second mate’s knee,” he remarked easily, as Flora began to apologise.
His second mate hadn’t been trying to force a romance, Flora thought dryly—though she kept that to herself.
“More biscuits for us, I suppose,” she said, moving to the stove where the kettle had begun to sing.
She quickly prepared a pot of tea and brought it to the table. Once he was settled with a cup and plate of biscuits before him, she finally took a seat.
After a few compliments about the quality of the biscuits, the captain quickly steered the conversation to the reason for his visit.
“I’m afraid that, after our chat last night, it looks as though Mr Goodwin might be innocent,” he said, setting his cup down, his tone as rueful as his expression.
“I thought as much from the look you gave me when you returned from the library,” Flora replied, offering him a smile tosoften his disappointment. “It’s no matter; crossing a name off the list is progress, even if it doesn’t feel like it.”
The captain gave a harrumph of protest, which caused Flora to smile.
“It’s true,” she insisted. “The more certain we are that our other suspects are innocent, the more certain we’ll be when we find the guilty party.”
“Are you always this optimistic, Miss Bridges?” he asked, eyeing her over the rim of his cup.
“Only when the good biscuits are out,” she replied, reaching across to take one from the plate.
As she brought it to her lips, she thought she noted the captain’s eyes following. As a result, when she bit into the shortbread, she was so flustered she was afraid she might choke.
“Remind me who our other suspects are?” the captain asked quickly, his ears redder than usual. Perhaps he was as overcome as she, she mused.
“Mrs Fitzhenry was the first,” Flora began, after taking a sip of tea to lubricate her now dry throat. “Though you are now mostly convinced of her innocence.”
“As the most compelling motive came from Mrs Canards and was more libel than motive, I remain mostly convinced,” he replied dryly.
“Then Mr Goodwin, who is now also ruled out—though you’re yet to tell me why.”
“He genuinely believes that he and Sir Ambrose were partners in the investing firm,” Captain Thorne winced a little as he spoke. “He’s remaining in Plumpton until the will is read, so he can collect his windfall. At first, I suspected he was engaging in elaborate subterfuge but as the conversation continued it became apparent that Mr Goodwin lacks the grey-matter for such a scheme.”
“Oh, dear,” Flora sighed, though she was glad that her own intuition about Mr Goodwin had been correct.
“In truth, I had my own questions about his guilt,” she ventured. “If he had discovered he’d been swindled, he’d more likely have killed in anger—and poison is not the weapon of a man in a rage.”
The captain gave her a startled glance and she flushed.
“It’s too slow,” she explained quickly. “A man that furious would have used force in the heat of the moment. And then there was the problem of how the poisoned bottle entered the house when he himself was refused entry.”
“Well,” the captain sighed, “We have our answer now. He didn’t.”
“If it wasn’t him, then who was the man I overheard arguing with Sir Ambrose on the morning of the murder?” Flora wondered aloud.
“Our killer, perhaps?” the captain raised a brow. “We’ll add whoever it is to the top of the list.”
“And what about Mrs Pinnock?” Flora ventured, recalling the disquiet she had felt last night as the elderly woman had recounted the tale of her investment losses.
Her suggestion was met with bemused silence from Captain Thorne.
“She collects brandy, she knew Sir Ambrose, and she said that she lost some of her late husband’s fortune to unsound investment advice—which might have come from Sir Ambrose,” Flora continued, a little annoyed by his skepticism. “If she wanted revenge, then poison would be the perfect means by which an elderly woman might seek it.”
