Page 34 of Evidence of Evil
“No, we can tell,” Constance said sincerely. “Neither do we.” Another thought appeared to strike her. “Does Mrs. Phelps gossip?”
Murray’s eyebrows shot up. “Sarah Phelps? I wouldn’t say she gossiped so much as hurled insults.”
“Did she hurl any at Miss Niall?”
“Not in my hearing. But then, she was too busy insulting me.”
Solomon smiled slightly. “You don’t seem to mind.”
Murray grinned. “No point, is there?”
“Because she’s mad?” Constance asked.
“Oh, I don’t think she’s mad. Just says and does exactly as she wants and doesn’t care tuppence for what the quack’s boot boy opines.”
*
“So it wasa lie,” Constance said with some satisfaction as she and Solomon took the road out of the village toward The Willows. “She was making mischief. The same with the accusations she made about Elizabeth to Sir Humphrey. She knew nothing. She was just casting aspersions in the hope something stuck.”
“Why would she do that?” Solomon wondered aloud. “Why risk her own reputation with such accusations?”
“Revenge,” Constance said. “Because Sir Humphrey didn’t marry her.”
“Six years is a long time to wait for vengeance.”
“Perhaps she still thought Humphrey would marry her when she returned from India. And was furious when she discovered he had already married someone else.”
“She would have known,” Solomon objected. “Maule corresponded with the colonel during those years. But I suspect you’re right that she bore a grudge. However, the damage was done. Ifshehad pushedElizabethinto the lake, I could more easily understand it.”
“So was she causing trouble to inspire him to divorce Elizabeth?” Constance said.
Solomon glanced at her. “Do you think he would do that? For anything?”
“No,” she admitted. “It’s too…disgraceful for a respectable man. On the other hand, Frances may not have known that.”
“Either way, she was behaving badly enough for either of them to have pushed her in the lake, however sorry they might have been afterward.”
“Only they didn’t,” Constance said. “No one did until after she was dead.”
“That’s the heart of the mystery,” he conceded. “What made you ask about Mrs. Phelps?”
“She lives between the lake and the Grange. Frances at least set off along the right path to have passed her cottage. She wieldsan axe like a twenty-year-old woodsman, and she was the first person I met who did not eulogize Frances. On the other hand, I doubt there was anything Frances could have said that would annoy her enough to commit murder.”
“Which might not matter if she was mad,” Solomon said thoughtfully. “Only, Dr. Murray doesn’t think she is. Which rules out our only other suspect.”
“Onlyother?” Constance repeated. “It strikes me that someone like Frances doesn’t just wake up one morning and decide she might as well be nasty, whether for pure spite or some kind of social blackmail. I don’t know what she got out of it, but I very much doubt Elizabeth and Humphrey were her only victims. She must have been practicing for years.”
Solomon frowned. “Do you think so? Then why does everyone speak of her as an angel? Just because she’s dead?”
Constance shrugged. “Partly, yes. The convention is that one does not speak ill of the dead. But also… I think she had some kind of power over people. The sort of presence that could make people believe whatever she wished.”
He must have looked skeptical at this, for she cast him a wry smile. “You have it too, you know.”
He was startled. “I do?”
“You create the impression you wish to create. It’s probably why no one ever hits you when you ask questions.”
“I thought that was because you fluttered your eyelashes at them.”
