Page 72 of Murder in Moonlight
Her lips quirked. “The latter.” She twisted the stem of her glass in her fingers, then said abruptly, “There are enough secrets in this house, so I shall tell you the truth and let you do what you will with it. I accepted your invitation because I thought you might be my brother.”
His mouth fell open. “Yourbrother?” he said with horror.
“My mother was abandoned by a gentleman. I thought I might have discovered his identity.”
Randolph felt numb. “Had you?”
“I don’t know. He died before I could ask him.”
Other people came into the room then. Constance rose and moved away, and very soon he was walking into dinner with his mother on his arm, patting her hand in a soothing, inattentive kind of way.
Hurt and furious, he could not bear to look at Constance. Though it did strike him, savagely, that revenge for her abandoned mother made an excellent motive for murder. A word to the police inspector and…
He who laughed last laughed longest. He could have the perfect revengeandget rid of the police and their insolent, upsetting questions, thus killing two birds rather neatly with one stone.
*
Dinner was eatenthat evening largely in silence, as though since Richards’s arrest and release they were now afraid to say anything at all about the murder or the police, and yet those things were clearly at the front of everyone’s minds.
From time to time, Solomon observed each of his fellow diners. Posture tense, faces bleak or falsely smiling, they madebrief remarks about the weather or the food and ate quickly in order to get away as soon as possible.
Miriam and Ellen tried to persuade their mother to eat, but she mostly shuffled her knife and fork around her plate and left the contents. Solomon watched her, her drooping shoulders and almost blank expression. He found it interesting that no one was seriously considering the widow as a suspect, although arguably she had been hurt more than Alice Bolton by Walter’s infidelity. Exactly how hurt, how humiliated, he still could not tell. She had not shunned Alice, but then, this was probably not the first time her husband had strayed. Could she have finally had enough with this double betrayal and lashed out?
In her own way, she had been fighting back. She had decided to flirt with Solomon to make her husband jealous, which had made her feel guilty when Walter died. But her sense of guilt could be over something else. She could even be planning to punish Alice in some similar fashion, although her listlessness argued against it. She would have to be a very clever actress.
Alice was more obviously strong, physically and mentally. And then there was Miriam, devoted to her mother, who had known about her father’s infidelity and perhaps resented being pushed into her own loveless marriage. Ellen, restless and distracted, probably had the strength but not the character to plan so dispassionately as to take the knife in advance.
Had a woman really planned and carried out so violent an attack? Solomon did not look at Constance, but he had never seriously considered her as the murderer. And yet if one put a madam beside these respectable and respected women, which was the likeliest culprit in the eyes of the world?
Randolph glanced in her direction. Solomon did not quite like his expression, which looked more speculative than besotted. Was he beginning to suspect Constance was not whoshe claimed to be? Would they all demand her arrest? Not that Harris seemed a man to be bullied…
He realized the women were leaving, and hastily stood up. Richards placed the decanters and fresh glasses on the table. Solomon had given up hoping to learn anything in such gatherings, and indeed, no one had anything to say. The post-prandial drink was quick and perfunctory, the trip to the drawing room merely to say goodnight. No one wanted to talk to anyone else. No one trusted anyone else.
Did the Boltons trust each other? Did the Albrights? If not, it was a long time to be shut up in a room alone together…
Constance walked past him, her skirts brushing against his leg.
“Goodnight, Mrs. Goldrich,” he said civilly.
She inclined her head in return, and he knew from that brief meeting of eyes that she wanted to talk to him.
Accordingly, when his goodnights were said, he walked across to the library, openly in search of a book to read. He left the door open, assuming she would join him when she could do so discreetly. However, while he wandered around the shelves, footsteps and voices faded to quiet. Davidson glanced in, said goodnight, and moved away.
The hall lights were dimmed to almost nothing. Giving up, Solomon seized a book at random and walked out. A light shone from under the billiard room door.
Drat the woman—how was he expected to guess she would go there? He moved silently across the hall and along the short passage. Voices drifted from the billiard room, but neither of them belonged to Constance.
Suddenly much more alert, Solomon stepped nearer.
“You see my problem?”
At first, Solomon could not recognize this rather stiff voice, though at once he knew the man who replied.
“I do, Peter, I do,” Thomas Bolton said sympathetically. “You spent the money before you had it in your hand, and a vicar in debt is not a reputation you want.”
Peter Albright, then. In debt? That was something Solomon had never considered.
“The vicarage is charming, of course,” Albright said, some of the stiffness fading from his manner, “but it was not great for entertaining on any scale. Mr. Winsom saw that at once and gladly lent me the money to make improvements. We went a little too far, and he was glad to lend the rest to cover the expense, only he died before he could.”
