Page 21 of Murder in Moonlight
Solomon raised his eyebrows. “She is angry with him about something. I may be self-obsessed, but I got the impression she was trying to rile her husband by inviting me.”
“By flirting with you,” she corrected him.
Annoyingly, he felt heat rise into his face. He hoped she could not see it. “In a very sedate way, perhaps. But it would surely have the same effect.”
“No, flirting is better, and she definitely was. Perhaps she had only just discovered Walter was unfaithful with her friend Alice Bolton.”
“But was he?” Solomon asked.
Constance considered. “It always struck me that he was a little friendlier than he should be with Alice. They exchange a lot of looks and are quite often discovered in private conversation. But then, the Boltons and the Winsoms are old friends—the husbands are business partners.”
“An affair could certainly be motive for Bolton or Alice or Deborah Winsom herself to kill him.” If it were true and if they had been found out. Or if he had ended the affair. Solomon frowned. “Could things really be so fraught amongst the two couples? Don’t they appear too…”
“Smug?” Constance suggested.
“I was going to saycontented, but perhaps there are elements of smugness. If Alice and Deborah are rivals in love, I’ve seen no signs of hostility between them.” In fact, he had seen them through her bedroom door, clinging together. “Have you?”
“Not really, but then, I never observed them before I came here, so I don’t really know them or how they were before. The four of them must be very close. On the other hand, Bolton seems to me to be very much the junior partner, overshadowed by Winsom, at least in personality.”
“And in business,” said Solomon, recalling that brief flash of something very like malevolence he had imagined in Bolton’seyes as they rested on his old friend. “Perhaps Bolton had simply had enough of being second fiddle. I certainly caught an expression that was neither friendship nor admiration.”
“Perhaps,” Constance said, clearly unconvinced. “But would you kill a man simply for outshining you?”
“I wouldn’t, no. But perhaps I should dig a little deeper. If Bolton is the brains behind their success and Winsom took all the credit—along, perhaps, with the bulk of the money and Bolton’s wife…”
Constance nodded. “It would help to know such things. But Randolph is right about one point—the Boltons share a bed. There are no dressing rooms in the guest bedchambers. They would know, surely, if one of them got up, committed murder, and came back to bed?”
“Not necessarily. And even if they did, would they say? A married couple tends to rise or fall together. Even if they’re unhappy, they would cover for each other.”
Constance waved her hand dismissively. “Then to the devil with them. Who else might have done it?”
“Randolph. To get his hands on the money or on you.”
“Would he, though? He’s not yet twenty-one. Would he not have a trustee or someone acting for him? To say nothing of Bolton.”
“Yes,” Solomon allowed. “But he would certainly have more clout, more access to money, and he could probably get around everyone else but his father where you are concerned.”
“I really don’t think he is so desperate for me that he would murder his father! He just tried to blackmail me.”
Solomon stopped suddenly. “If he planned the murder, perhaps you were only invited to supply his alibi.”
Constance regarded him with dislike. “Now that really is insulting. Although it might well be true. If the knife were taken from the kitchen in advance, then the murder was surelyplanned. And we know Randolph was up and wandering at the time it happened.”
“Had he ever come to your room before last night?”
“Mr. Grey,” she drawled. “What a question to ask a lady.” She sighed. “Which, of course, I am not. On the other hand, I’ve just told you I suspected he was my brother!”
“I didn’t ask if you let him in,” Solomon said mildly, “only if he knocked at your door.”
“No, he treated me with a great deal of respect,” she admitted. “It was a bit of a balancing act, if you want the truth, but I very much had the upper hand in our relationship.”
She was used to manipulating men. For her own possibly ridiculous reasons, she had decided to come here and callously picked on young Randolph as her means. Solomon could almost see the situation in his mind’s eye—Constance, all womanly temptation, twisting the boy around her little finger, while maintaining all the proprieties of a tolerant if indulgent sister, a respectable widow, a few years older and wiser than the infatuated young man.
He didn’t like the images. The very idea was distasteful. But then, she had probably learned very early in life to be all things to all men. He didn’t like that notion either. It involved too much pity as well as disdain. And God knew he had never been immune to her undeniable charms.
For an instant he remembered her beneath the hazily flaring torchlight in a foggy back alley, incongruously well dressed and the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. Unaware of him, she had been watching other people. She had not seen the man falling backward off the roof directly above her.
Instinct had propelled Solomon into her, pushing her to safety, holding her upright. No woman ever had felt so wonderful in his arms, even in that tiny moment that had nothing to do with lust. She had stared up at him, startled,confused, only just absorbing the knowledge of her narrow escape. And yet, just for a moment, she had seemed frightened. Not of death but of him.
