Page 42 of Murder in Moonlight
But it did not make her immune from his investigation. At this stage, any in the house could be guilty. Any of them vouching for each other could be lying, and from this he did not exclude either Silver or Grey.
Goldrich. She had a sense of humor. He gave her that.
The victim’s widow was the first person he interviewed. Pale and stiff, she bristled with outrage at first, then drooped when her son stormed into the room, glowering. Since Mrs. Winsom had already told him the same story he had learned from Grey and from Constance Silver’s notes, he left her to it for now, and, with permission to use the dead man’s study for his interviews, he asked Mr. Randolph Winsom to join him there.
The study had clearly never been used as such. Though it contained a small desk and an equally small bookcase, it smelled faintly of old cigar smoke and was given over to masculine comfort—leather armchairs, a footstool, a tray of glasses and well-stocked decanters. This, Harris suspected, was where the victim had come to be alone and to relax, uninterrupted.
“Your father didn’t do much work here, did he?”
Randolph flared his nostrils. “We have other rooms. If he chose to work at home, he did so in the library. I can show you that if you prefer.”
“Perhaps later,” Harris said amiably. He had met Randolph’s type before—young, superior, overconfident in his privileged birth, education, and wealth. Harris sat down at one side of the desk and began by taking the wind out of his sails. “My sincere condolences, sir. An appalling thing to have happened. I know you will wish to give us every assistance in discovering who murdered your father.”
Randolph could only say, “Of course I will.”
“I understand you have all discussed it among yourselves. Mrs. Goldrich gave us your list of everyone’s whereabouts that night, which is most helpful.”
Randolph tried to look gratified. Harris gathered that he despised the list and had contributed to it only under the pressure of his peers.
“It’s a very useful starting point for us,” Harris explained, “but I’ve found over many years that people will often say one thing in public and another in private, where they will be guaranteed discretion.”
Randolph regarded him with blatant disbelief. “Discretion? Seriously?”
“Providing it does not affect the case.” Harris smiled very slightly. “And providing the secret is not the murderer’s. If someone does not tell me the truth, it means he has something to hide. So forgive me when I ask you where you were from around eleven of the clock on Thursday evening.”
“I went to my room just before eleven and prepared for bed.”
“But you did not go to bed, as you told everyone else?”
Randolph shifted in his seat. He seemed about to lie, then said abruptly, “No. Just after midnight I walked along the passage to see if Mrs. Goldrich was as wakeful as I.”
“Mrs. Goldrich being a particular friend of yours?” Harris asked genially.
The boy blushed, bless him. “I’ll not deny I admire her,” he said. “In fact, it was I who invited her to Greenforth when I was introduced to her in London. I don’t normally like the country. I don’t like country hours, and I suspected she didn’t, either. So I knocked on her door.”
“At what time, sir?”
He shrugged impatiently. “I don’t know precisely. Not long after midnight. The drawing room clock had chimed the hour a few minutes previously, and the house was quiet.”
“So you knocked on her door,” Harris prompted him.
“She didn’t answer, so I knocked again as loudly as I dared, then pushed open the door to see if she were asleep.”
“You’re lucky she didn’t scream the house down,” Harris said.
“Constance is not so chicken-hearted. At any rate, she had no chance to because she was not in her room. I learned later she had gone to the library to find a book to read, but by the time she came back, I was in my own room and probably sound asleep. For I definitely woke up to my mother’s screaming.”
“That must have been very harrowing.”
Randolph shuddered. It seemed genuine. “Thank God it wasn’t she who found him. Grey did. He claims he saw someone in the garden and went to investigate.”
“Your father was a banker, was he not? Did he do business with Mr. Grey?”
“Not yet, but I know he had it in mind.”
“Is that why he invited Mr. Grey here?”
“Oh no, my mother invited him. She thought he would entertain her guests, being widely traveled and very successful. She might even have thought he was a former slave in the West Indies—anti-slavery is one of her causes. But my father certainly didn’t object.”
