Page 96 of Murder in Moonlight
“There’s no need, sir. What makes you think they were in the old wing?”
“I saw them go in.”
“When was that, sir?”
“Just after midnight. I daresay you know Grey had this ridiculous idea that one of us would go to the library and confess to killing poor Walter, after whichhewould decide what to do about it! I confess I was curious to see if anyone would go. So I went downstairs, and that was when I saw him with Mrs. Goldrich, slipping through the door to the old wing. He musthave given up on confession. Perhaps she convinced him of his stupidity.”
“Not many people call Solomon Grey stupid,” Davidson remarked.
“And yet we are all here,” Bolton snapped. “And he is inthere!” He gestured toward the smoking building. Which was when he realized what he should have observed from the beginning.
No one was concerned for the pair trapped in the fire. No one was trying to save them.
Because…
A foot crunched in the gravel behind him. His neck prickled and he turned very slowly to face Solomon Grey. In his black-streaked white shirt, his short hair awry, he should not have been able to look elegant or superior. He managed both. And beside him, her hair tumbling around her shoulders, looking like a decadent angel, even with a bandage around her head and Grey’s coat around her shoulders, was Mrs. Goldrich.
He had told her everything. The urge had been irresistible.
He swung back to the inspector. Deborah stood just a little way from him, flanked by Miriam and Ellen. Alice had let go of him. Her face showed he had never won her, only a last trickle of dying loyalty. It had never been enough.
And Deborah…
“You told them,” he said in disbelief. Despite the danger to herself and her family, the damage of such scandal, she had blabbed.
“You wouldn’t stop,” she whispered. “I had to do the right thing. Finally.”
Miriam put her arm around her mother’s shoulder. Ellen stared at him. Walter’s children.
“Thomas Bolton,” Inspector Harris said, “I am arresting you for the murder of Walter Winsom, for the attempted murder of Solomon Grey and Constance…er, this lady.”
*
The residents ofGreenforth all slept elsewhere that night. The Winsoms were taken in by neighbors, the servants scattered.
Ellen barely slept. She felt stunned by the revelations of the night, wondering if she should despise her mother for her moral lapse. But a new kind of adult understanding was seeping into her, a sympathy with making mistakes in impossible, tragic situations. Was there really nothing in the world to look forward to except heartache and an unfaithful husband?
Not all husbands were like that, of course. Peter was not. But then, she could never imagine being married to Peter. He and Miriam seemed to have grown closer over these last difficult days. She hoped that would last. Miriam deserved to be happy.
If any of them could be now.
Outside the window of her guest bedroom, the sun shone.Incongruous. Over the fields and hedgerows, she could still see the gray cloud over Greenforth House.In more ways than one.
Dressed in the ill-fitting gown loaned by the squire’s daughter Amelia, she left her room and prowled the quiet house where her hosts still slept. She hoped her mother and her siblings did, too.
She was crossing the entrance hall toward the front door when someone sprang up from the old-fashioned wooden settle that lived there to discourage unfavored visitors.
“Sergeant Flynn,” she said in surprise.
She ought to be annoyed to see him here, bothering them even now, and yet she wasn’t. He had helped extinguish the fire last night. He had taken her father’s murderer away to prison.She still couldn’t think of the murderer as the same man she had known all her life.
“I’m sorry to come so early,” Flynn said. “After the night you’ve all had, I didn’t really expect to find anyone up. I really just wanted to pass on the message that the sooner your mother writes and signs her statement, the better it will be. Also for Mrs. Bolton.”
Ellen frowned. “WhereisMrs. Bolton?”
“With the vicar and his wife.”
Ellen rubbed her forehead. “This must be as awful for her… I don’t really know what to do.”
