Page 81 of Evidence of Evil
The kitchen curtains were not closed, and a lamp burned within.
“It’s probably the housekeeper,” Constance hissed.
“Perhaps. Knock on the door.”
She scowled, and for a moment he thought she would refuse. Instead, she wriggled against him to draw her squashed arm free, while he endured the exquisite torture. Reaching beyond him, she scratched quietly at the door. He opened his mouth to demand greater effort, but already, he heard the scraping of a chair on the floor. The door opened and Dr. Murray was revealed in his shirt sleeves, his throat bare and his waistcoat unfastened.
His eyebrows flew up and he threw the door wide. “Good grief, what has happened? Bring her inside.”
“I’m fine,” Constance said crossly. “We shouldn’t be disturbing you for something so trivial. I’m afraid I went over on my ankle, but I’m sure it will be fine in the morning.”
“You had better let me judge,” Murray said. “Since you are here.”
Solomon lowered her to one of the four kitchen chairs at the well-scrubbed table. Murray went to the sink and washed his hands with soap. After drying his hands on a clean towel he took from a drawer, he dropped to his knees before Constance and gently placed her foot on his lap. Without fuss, he removed the stocking.
Her ankle was more swollen now, and a dark bruise was forming there and along the roots of her toes. He passed the towel to Solomon. “Soak that for me, would you? And wring it out.”
While Solomon obeyed, Murray felt around the ankle and foot. Constance gritted her teeth but didn’t otherwise complain, even when the doctor manipulated her foot, then, with a gruntof satisfaction, wrapped the cloth around it. Dragging forward another chair, he placed her foot upon it.
“A sprain, as you thought,” he pronounced. “It will be painful for several days and will require rest. Let me fetch a bandage.”
As he stood and went to the cupboard at the other side of the room, Solomon examined her face. Her pain made him anxious, uncomfortable in ways he was not used to. But her gaze was beyond him, fixed on the little table by the back door, where he had dumped their lantern. Beside it sat a flint and tinder box, a tiny candle, and another fat, bulbous lantern of the type he had seen…where?
Fairfield Grange.
Constance lifted her gaze to Solomon’s face. A blaze of triumph lit her eyes as she glanced quickly, significantly, at Murray.
Murray!
Chapter Seventeen
Solomon’s head reeledall over again, and yet lots of mental gears were slipping into place.
They had never truly considered Dr. Murray because he was the one who had drawn attention to Frances’s lungs, pointing out that she had not drowned as was originally assumed, and setting off the whole murder inquiry.
But if Murray was the dead woman’s lover… Surely, it made sense? She’d wanted to be a physician once, had studied books on anatomy that appalled her parents. She must have been drawn to a doctor who was young, personable, a gentleman by education if nothing else. No doubt he had been flattered and easy to manipulate—until he had had enough. Perhaps she had betrayed him, taunted him as she had done Elizabeth and Maule, because he had only ever been a substitute for Sir Humphrey. From a lover, such cruelty must have been unendurable…
If Murray had been with Frances in Sarah Phelps’s cottage, then it would have been easy to smother her with Sarah’s pillow, or poison her or whatever was done to her, then put her in the wheelbarrow in the dead of night to dump her in The Willows lake—taking with him the lantern Frances herself was carrying when she’d left Elizabeth and gone to meet her lover.
Oh, yes, Murray…
The young doctor placed a bandage on the table and poured two cups of tea from the pot beside it. He put sugar in onewithout asking and pushed it toward Constance, along with a jug of milk. The other cup, he gave to Solomon.
“Thank you,” Constance said meekly, although she did not take sugar in her tea.
Murray picked up his own half-full cup and finished it before reaching for the bandage. Solomon waited for fear and anger to slice through him. But they were unaccountably slow to form, even though a murderer should not be touching Constance.
Nor should he be such an instinctively kind man, a healer. Murray had not even asked where she had fallen or why they were out walking so late. Healing was his first priority. Had he not pointed out that Frances had not drowned, everyone would have gone on assuming she had.
“I do like that shape of lantern,” Constance said idly, as though making mere small talk while the doctor bandaged her foot and ankle.
“Hmm?” Murray spared it a quick glance. “Oh yes. It’s not ours. It comes from the Grange. Laing keeps forgetting to take it back.”
Because not Laing but Murray had brought it to the house? Then again, only Laing attended the Nialls, so how had Murray met Frances? By chance?
Sarah insisted on seeing Laing too. Solomon took a breath. Where was Murray’s excuse for going to Sarah’s house so often? Maule had given the impression that earlier today had been the first time. Sarah, like the Nialls, only consulted Laing.
Solomon wanted to bang his head on the table for his own stupidity.
