Page 36 of Evidence of Evil
But then, Sarah herself was no angel. Even the best of her memories were tarnished now. Who was she to judge anyone?
Won’t stop me…
As she leaned against the doorframe, she heard quiet footsteps in the road beyond her hedge. The faint light of a lantern glowed above, swinging slightly as its carrier walked. No, there was more than one person. Two.
They did not speak, so she couldn’t tell who they were until they passed the gap in her hedge and the lantern light flickered over them. The tall, dark fellow, and his far-too-pretty wife with the veiled eyes. Eyes not unlike the new Lady Maule’s, she realized now. She just hid it better. They were odd visitors for Sir Humphrey.
And what on earth were they doing creeping about the lanes at this time of night?
Like Frances had the night she’d apparently died. Sarah had told the truth. She hadn’t seen her come back. But she’d heard her—she recognized the girl’s arrogant footsteps, she always had—and seen her lantern’s glow.
But Sarah had no intention of telling.
Chapter Eight
Skulking behind thelarge oak tree, whose branches spread as closely as she remembered to the first back window of Frances’s rooms, Constance gazed up at the second-floor windows. Like the rest of the house, they were all in darkness. Since Solomon had doused the lantern, they were relying on the moonlight, which, fortunately, was quite bright.
The country had a different quality of silence to the city—deeper, at once eerier and less dangerous. It was only harmless animals that rustled through the undergrowth, only owls and other nightbirds breaking it with their cries, not drunks or thieves or victims.
Constance brought her lips close to Solomon’s ear. “I’ll climb up and let you in the back door,” she breathed.
He cast her a disparaging look and at the same time swung himself up into the tree branches, deft, sure-footed, and as graceful as ever. A man of many surprises, was Solomon. But then, he’d been brought up in the country. No doubt he and his brother had run as wild as any.
Constance’s climbing skills had been learned in the city and had more to do with buildings, drainpipes, and pursuit by police. At least she was used to climbing in skirts. For tonight, she wore a darker, much simpler gown that had no need of crinoline.
She waited until he had climbed up to the next branch, and then moved when he did to avoid the tree shaking constantly. It was a simple climb, almost as though the branches hadbeen trained in the right direction. And when they came to the window, there was a simple step from the branch to the window ledge, one needing only the well-worn foothold in the wall for balance.
Given how easy it was to reach, the window was probably locked, in which case they would have to climb all the way down again and try to pick the lock to the side door. Constance had been better at picking pockets than locks, but she might manage it…
Above her, she heard the faintest rattling as Solomon drew up the sash. She smiled into the darkness and watched his shadowy figure vanish. Then, as she climbed up to the final branch and shuffled along, he reached out of the window to catch her. She wanted to fume that she was perfectly capable, but they could not afford the noise, And, in fact, stepping onto the window ledge, she didn’t actually mind the extra security of his strong hands at her waist, assisting her to sit astride the sill and duck through.
He closed the window most of the way behind him and softly drew the curtains back into place.
Constance looked around her, found the shape of a large bed, and located a candle, which she lit from the flint in her pocket. It took longer than she would have liked, and the noise sounded bizarrely loud in the silent house. But eventually, by its flaring glow, she saw that the bed had been stripped of all but its curtains, the matching coverlet neatly folded on the thick feather mattress. There was nothing on the table except an oil lamp. Frustratingly, it looked as if the room had been stripped already.
Still, Constance moved toward the nightstand, which had a drawer.
It was empty. Solomon glided past her to the bare dressing table. On it stood only an almost-empty perfume bottle and silver-backed hairbrushes. He slid open the drawer and found ajewel case, and Constance brought over the candle for a closer look.
Frances had possessed a lot of jewelry—diamonds, rubies, turquoises, and stunning lapis lazuli. Some of it was very intricate and Eastern in appearance, so it had probably been made in India. But there seemed to be no false bottom in the case, no betraying notes or accounts beneath the jewelry or in the otherwise empty drawer.
As one, they moved through to the dressing room and began a long, thorough search among the dead woman’s many clothes. Constance felt behind drawers and furniture for anything a secretive woman might have hidden, but again they found nothing.
They moved through to her private sitting room, though Constance had begun to doubt the point. If she were right in her conjectures, Frances had been too wily to leave physical proof. In fact, Constance was feeling guiltilywrong. After all, Frances Niall was the victim ofmurder. Was it really right to blame her like this, just because of some nasty things she had said to Elizabeth and Sir Humphrey? After all, from her point of view at least, Maule had betrayed her.
At that point, Constance only kept looking because they were already here.
Like the dressing room, Frances’s sitting room appeared to have been left exactly as it was before she died. The furniture had been dusted and polished, the floors kept clean, almost like a shrine. But when Constance opened the first drawer of the surprisingly substantial desk, it was stuffed with papers. As if her family could not bring themselves to go through them. To go through her private things, like giving away her clothes, would be to acknowledge that she was gone from their lives altogether.
Swallowing hard, Constance glanced over her shoulder at Solomon, who was drawing a bottle from the pretty cabinet cupboard. He unstopped it and sniffed.
“Brandy,” he whispered. “Half full.”
So, the woman had liked a tipple. Unladylike, but hardly a crime.
While Solomon felt beneath the chairs and squeezed the cushions for signs of hidden items, Constance began to rummage in the drawer. There were bills for rather staggering amounts of money from dressmakers. Colonel Niall must have been both wealthy and generous. A small notebook had pages of initials and, beside each, what looked like reminder words or vague instructions.
CB– last position, law
