Page 86 of Murder in Moonlight
Solomon had notbeen strictly honest with Constance. Though he did not know with any certainty who had murdered Walter Winsom, a new theory that seemed to fit everything was bouncing around his mind, looking for proof or refutation.
It all stemmed from one of the chaotic thoughts swirling around his brain as he made tentative friends with Monster. Had Deborah Winsom brought him here deliberately and then abandoned him to his fate? He remembered her flapping her arms in the dog as though shooing him away, and yet she knew movement excited him.
The suspicion didn’t really hold up to much scrutiny, especially now he knew the dog had escaped last night. There was no way she could have known the dog would still be free, let alone that he would come to that precise place at that precise time. Unless she had a partner who had brought the dog to the vicinity.
Although he had absolutely no proof of that, it did get him thinking along different lines.
What if there were not one murderer but two? Ready to provide each other with information and alibis in order to make the crime easier to commit and to divert investigation?
The most obvious pairings were married couples, already dependent on each other. Which meant the Boltons or theAlbrights. And yet neither marriage was close and loving. Would Alice really ally with her husband to kill her lover? The other way around would have made more sense. And would Miriam really kill her father, whatever he had done? Somehow, he couldn’t really imagine the vicar committing so heinous a crime either.
No, the theory was foolish, which was why he didn’t mention it to Constance. He refused to analyze his reluctance to look foolish in her eyes. He rather liked her current friendship and the way she trusted him.
Since everyone had dispersed and the house was quiet, he accepted her invitation to look at her lists and connections.
Paper was spread all over her bedchamber floor, some of it closely written, with inked arrows pointing to other pieces of paper that she had numbered, presumably to keep track of when she picked it all off the floor.
He crouched down, examining it with her, while she sat on the other side, her legs drawn up beneath her billowing skirts. How on earth did she control them?
Concentrate, Sol, concentrate.
She pointed at one piece of paper with the wordBANKin large letters. “What do you make of the books? Anything?”
“They seem deliberately impenetrable, which tells me something in itself. But banks are secretive by nature and necessity, so it may mean nothing. Still, I’ll work on them some more this afternoon. And Harris and Flynn have gone to speak to the bank staff and the solicitors, so they may well find out more. At least whether or not the bank is in trouble.”
“What difference would that actually make?” she mused. “Removing Winsom will not aid its recovery, although I suppose it limits the number of people who share the profits. In which case, Bolton and Randolph are the main beneficiaries.”
And Randolph would have known Bolton all his life. Were they the allies he was looking for? If the bank was failing, would it even matter how many people it needed to keep?
He read every piece of paper again, followed every arrow. She was thorough, remembered every detail, even quoted a few things people had said that seemed significant.
“This is helpful,” he said at last. “Clarifies… Though everyone here is connected somehow to everyone else as well as to the victim. And if we discount married alibis, anyone could have committed the murder.Andlet Monster out.”
“Meaning we are no further forward,” she said, sighing.
“No, we are. I can’t help feeling we have all the information we need to solve this, and I think we know everyone involved much better than we did.” He passed his hand over the paper diagram. “The answer is here, somewhere.”
“So let us bait our trap,” she said. “And see who falls in.”
*
She didn’t likehis plan, of course, largely because it kept her out of the thick of things. Although she did eventually see the need of another witness, and possibly of rousing the household if necessary to save his life.
“Not that I am anticipating difficulty, you understand. But one never knows.”
He left her after that, to go and pore over the bank ledgers once more. A thankless task, he thought gloomily after an hour. The trouble was, one needed all the books, not just these two, to follow the complete trail of particular amounts.
He hoped the police could obtain access to them—and preferably to someone who understood them better than he.
And then he saw it. One single discrepancy from one book to the next, based on a hard-to-read figure that could have been a1 or a 7, transcribed downward after the first of the far too many column entries. Which made no sense if the bank was covering up the fact that it was failing. And he could see no sign of that. Certainly the profits were down in the last couple of years, judging by the figures in the final books, but they were not yet in trouble. They were just being careful.
On the other hand, if six thousand pounds were unaccounted for… And these were not the day-to-day accounts, but the monthly figures… If such mistakes had been scattered throughout the weeks, then the fraud could be massive.
His heart was thudding. Framley, who had been with the bank for years, had been the only employee who had access to these books. Walter had discovered the fraud and blamed him.
What if he had then discovered the same fraud continued after Framley’s dismissal? And now the only person who had access to those books, apart from him, was Thomas Bolton.
“Got you,” he whispered, throwing himself back in his chair.
