Page 52 of Evidence of Evil
Reluctant to faceeither Colonel Niall or his son, Constance took the easier route and knocked on the kitchen door.
“Bless you, ma’am, what you coming in this way for?” demanded the flustered kitchen maid, opening the door wide to let her in.
“Oh, I didn’t want to disturb the family,” Constance said. “Would you please ask Mr. Worcester if he could spare me a few minutes of his time?”
While the girl scuttled off, Constance caught the resentful stares of the other servants. They didn’t like their own space being invaded, especially with no notice, and not even by family, but by a friend of a friend of the family. If the Maules were still accounted friends. Had Frances really wanted to cause this much damage? Or had she just not cared very much?
The maid came back and took Constance to the butler’s pantry.
Constance waited until the door closed and the girl’s footsteps faded back across the kitchen floor. The butler stood impassively before her, waiting to learn her business.
“I’m sorry to disturb you again, Worcester, but I’m afraid I have to. And I have to speak of things that I’m sure will cause you pain.”
“Youmay have to, ma’am,” he said firmly. “Ido not.”
Uh-oh. “Then I hope you will choose to,” she said steadily. “Because the more I learn of Miss Frances, the more I think she was not only a dangerous person, but putting herself in danger, too. She found unique ways of manipulating people, did she not? Of getting them to do her bidding.”
He inclined his head but said nothing. Nor did he invite her to sit, and somehow, in his private space, she didn’t quite like to without invitation.
“May I know,” she said as delicately as she could, “what hold she had over you?”
“What makes you think she had any?”
“The fact that she no longer troubled to sneak out of the house. She knew you would see her. I daresay you opened the front door for her on many occasions. And yet you never told the colonel.”
“I couldn’t. It would have broken his heart all over again.”
“He might have stopped her.” She didn’t want to say the rest.She might not have died.
But it seemed he had already thought of that, for he closed his eyes in clear pain. “Don’t, ma’am. I know what I’ve done, and I doubt the colonel can bear much more.”
“Did she threaten you with some discredit?”
“Not me so much as my father. He got into trouble once, when he was young. He’s been a good man ever since, but she threatened to have him arrested again, and I don’t doubt she would and could have done so.”
“If you hadn’t kept quiet about her little expeditions?”
He nodded miserably.
“Worcester, this is the heart of the matter. To discover who hurt her, I need to know where she went, whom she was seeing.”
“She never told me that,” he said. “It would have given me something to hold over her and get myself free.”
Damn her, Frances had been good at the dreadful games she played. “Then you have no idea? Not even a guess by how long she was gone at a time?”
“Sometimes she went out in the afternoon and didn’t come home until morning. Other times, she was gone a bare half-hour. There was no consistency in her movements.”
“Did you see what direction she took?” Constance asked without much hope.
“Different directions.”
“But she didn’t ride, did she?”
“No, she usually walked.”
“I don’t suppose you ever intercepted notes addressed to her? Or from her to someone else?”
“No.” He didn’t say that Bingham had been responsible for ferrying them, though he probably knew. In his own way, he was trying to protect the girl. It seemed they all needed protecting in this house. Even Frances, who must have gone too far in the end for someone…
