Page 87 of Evidence of Evil
“Let’s go inside,” he suggested. “Maule, will you help Constance? She can’t walk on that foot, and you may have noticed she has no shoe. I’ll help Dr. Murray with Laing.”
Constance would have preferred to keep Solomon with her, though she could hardly complain. Gratefully, she accepted the help of Humphrey and Elizabeth, and fell with some relief into the upholstered chair they put her in.
Without a word, Sarah filled her kettle and set in on the stove.
Laing was groaning as Solomon and Murray half carried him inside and dropped him onto a hard chair.
“There’s a halter rope in the corner,” Sarah said.
“There’s no need,” Laing said dully. But Solomon bound him to the chair anyway.
“Who doesn’t want tea?” Sarah asked. “There’s only three cups.”
Solomon produced a flask from his coat pocket and saluted her with it. “Perhaps just for the ladies.”
Constance, who would rather have had the brandy, did not argue.
“Fitting,” Sarah said, clattering cups and crockery, “that he comes back here in that barrow. It’s what he used to carry Frances Niall in before he dumped her into Willow Lake.”
Murray sat suddenly down on the floor. “Laingkilled her? For God’s sake, Laing, deny it!”
Laing shrugged wearily. “What is the point? I thought I could get away with it. I even believed it was best that I did, because of the good work I do here. But I was lying to myself. I broke my oath. I did harm. I killed and I lied. And you, Murray, are already a better physician than I would ever be.”
“But why?” Elizabeth asked, bewildered. “Why did you kill her?”
Laing closed his eyes and was silent. But Constance saw the tears running down his nose.
“He was her lover,” she said. “Not in an evil seducer kind of way, or at least I don’t think so. You really did love her, didn’t you, doctor?”
Laing nodded. Since he had no free hands, he swiped his face against his shoulder with indifferent results.
“Then why on earth did you kill her?” Murray demanded.
“Because she was evil!” Laing burst out, and then groaned. “Because she didn’t love me. It was always Maule. She talked about him all the time, mostly to wind me up, to hurt me as the representative of all men. I think she wanted to hurt Maule, although she never could, because he never really looked at her, not before she went to India, and certainly not when she returned. She said such awful things that night…”
And she had no empathy, Constance thought, no concept that people could snap with enough provocation and act outside their usual character.
“I couldn’t stand it anymore,” Laing all but whispered. “I didn’t mean to kill her. At least, I don’t think I did. I just had to shut her up, stop the terrible words just for a moment.”
“So you put the pillow over her face and she stopped,” Constance said.
He nodded dumbly.
“Mypillow?” Sarah said in outrage.
“Yours?” Humphrey said, startled. He’d seemed stunned since Laing’s revelations about Frances’s feelings.
Sarah placed two cups on the table with some force, shoving them toward Constance and Elizabeth.
Constance said, “Mrs. Phelps let them meet in her house.” In a lower voice, she added. “You don’t need to tell us how she compelled you, just that she did.”
“It’s my silence that led to her death,” Sarah said fiercely, “and nearly led to yours and his too. I should never have let her in the house, never have added to her silly belief that she was invincible, untouchable. But I could tell she was headed for a fall, and I wasgladof it, God forgive me.” She sat down abruptly on the nearest rickety chair. “She said I’d killed my husband, that Dr. Laing knew and would back her up.”
Everyone stared at her, even Laing, who’d seemed to lose interest in the proceedings.
“Of course you didn’t kill Phelps,” Humphrey said forcefully. “You looked after him devotedly, nursed him…”
“I gave him digitalis for his heart,” Sarah said miserably. “I got the dose wrong. If I hadn’t, he wouldn’t have died.”
