Page 38 of Evidence of Evil
There was no sign of the letter about the baby from L. Dunne. Solomon suspected Constance had pocketed that when she took out the pistol. John’s eyes were fixed on the bottom drawer and the little pile of treasures.
“Why would she keep such things there?” Constance asked.
“Who knows?”
“Thenyoudon’t?” Solomon said quickly. “Do you know where they came from?”
John shook his head.
“Did she steal them?” Constance asked.
The head shake was more violent this time. “I doubt it. I really don’t know, but I suspect they were gifts.”
“From whom?” Solomon asked. He didn’t want the answer to beSir Humphrey.
“Various admirers, I imagine,” John said. “She liked gifts. She used to show me things she had been given, especially when I had received nothing.”
Solomon frowned. “Then these are from years ago? From before she went to India?”
“Some of them certainly are.” John went back and picked up his dropped candle, putting it back in its holder before he went to the desk and lit it from theirs. Crouching down, he poked with his free hand among the hidden gifts.
He picked out a silver bracelet with a single diamond set in the middle of the band. “I don’t remember this one.”
“Why would she hide gifts?” Constance asked. “It makes no sense if she liked people to know about them.”
John’s smile was crooked and not exactly loving. “Only those who would be upset by them. Look, I can see you’ve guessed that Frances was not exactly what she pretended to be. It’s the cross my father and I bear. Please don’t make us do so in public.”
“Whatwasshe like?” Solomon asked. “Truly?”
“Truly? She could be spiteful, manipulative, and God help you if you were her latest…target.”
“Was Lady Maule her latest target?” Constance asked. “Is that why your father is so convinced she is the killer?”
John hesitated, then nodded curtly. “I think so. It crossed my mind too, and I couldn’t altogether blame Lady Maule for turning on her. Only I can’t see how she did it.”
“I don’t believe she did,” Constance said. “She is too patient with people. Who else was a target of your sister’s spite?”
John groaned and sat down in the nearest chair before springing back up again as he realized Constance still stood. A very polite young man, considering they had broken into his house. “I don’t know. It wasn’t really until that dinner at The Willows, when Frances and Lady Maule argued, that I really paid attention. Until then, I thought she—Frances—had calmed down into the person she should always have been. I thought India had been good for her.”
“Whydidyour father take her off to India?” Solomon demanded. “Had he worked out that Maule would not marry her?”
“Probably,” John said tiredly. “But that’s something else I don’t really know. I was at school and then university. I only went to visit them in India for the last couple of months and then returned home with them.”
“What did you think?” Solomon asked. “At the time?”
Again, John dragged his fingers through his hair and tugged it. “I thought she had grown too wild for my father to handle here. I thought he hauled her off before she did something from which she would never recover, socially or morally. In India, she could be surrounded by strangers, servants, soldiers loyal to my father.”
“Guarded?” Constance said.
“I thought maybe something like that. But when I finally went there, I saw no signs of it. Papa and Frances seemed to be getting on much better together, and I never heard a whisper of scandal. It was almost too good to be true, but I believed she had settled down after a wild girlhood.”
She had been about twenty-two when she left for India. Which made her wild girlhood somewhat extended.
“Did she know Sir Humphrey was married before you returned to Fairfield?” Solomon asked.
“Yes. She didn’t seem to care. She had moved on in her mind and heart, I suppose. And she no longer seemed so cruel or spiteful.”
Constance pounced. “Cruel?”
