Page 11 of Evidence of Evil
He shrugged without turning. “I can’t make up my mind. He seems devoted, saysmy wifewith pride, takes her and his children rowing on the lake. But I don’t think he’s being entirely truthful.”
She stilled. He could feel her turning to look at his back. “You don’t like him.”
“Actually, I do. He just strikes me as a man with a secret.” Reluctantly, he turned to face Constance.
She had put her hairbrushes next to his on the dressing table, along with a perfume bottle and a couple of the mysteriousjars that always seemed to accompany a female. It was all disconcertingly domesticated.
“I’m not sure Elizabeth was telling me everything either,” she admitted. “She loves him. Of that I am not in doubt. But whether he loves her, whether they are covering for each other… Do you think someonedidkill that woman? Or was it a tragic accident, as they first thought, and the family is simply lashing out?”
“I don’t know. Maule showed me where she was found. Far enough away from the bank that she was unlikely to have slipped into the water. The lake is very still and sheltered. Short of a high wind, the body is unlikely to have moved much. It’s possible someone put her in the water, then pushed her away from the bank with a boat hook.”
He took the handkerchief from his pocket and carefully unfolded it to show her the threads of cotton. “I found them on the end of the hook, almost unnoticeable.”
“Well done,” she said, peering at them. She raised her eyes to his face. “So it’s possible she was killed elsewhere and dropped in the lake…to implicate the Maules? Elizabeth in particular?”
“Unless the murderer was just trying to hide the body and didn’t realize it would rise naturally to the surface.”
She sighed. “Why would anyone kill her in the first place? She has hardly been back in the country long enough to have acquired murder-worthy quantities of ill will. They only returned here in the spring, a bare six months ago.”
“Elizabeth didn’t like her,” he pointed out.
“Elizabeth is not particularly secure,” Constance said ruefully. “In her position among her neighbors or in her marriage. If this woman was lovely and charming, she could easily feel threatened.”
“You think she was jealous?” Solomon asked.
Constance frowned. “Not jealous enough to commit murder, though it could explain her antipathy. She is not quarrelsome bynature, but she will defend herself. She could not have survived if she didn’t.”
“What if defending herself—or her husband and new family—necessitated being rid of Frances Niall?”
Constance shook her head violently. “No. She would have found another way. In any case, what on earth could one woman recently returned from India possibly have done to threaten a neighbor who probably knew her from childhood?”
“I have no idea. None of it seems very likely, and yet the woman is dead, fished out of their lake, and she did not drown.”
“If you are right,” Constance said slowly, walking away from him toward the bed, “about someone deliberately implicating Elizabeth in her death, then it has to have been someone who knew Frances had come here to speak to her. We need to speak to her family.”
“I suspect that will have to wait until tomorrow. Do you want to see the lake?”
“Yes,” said Constance decisively.
*
Elizabeth was decidingbetween a pearl necklace and a simple gold locket when Humphrey wandered into the bedroom with his cuff links in one hand.
“Oblige me, my love,” he said, as he often did.
Elizabeth smiled as she laid down her own jewelry and went to him. She liked performing these little wifely services for him. As she threaded the buttons through his cuffs she asked, “Did you play football with the boys?”
“I did. They put me in goal and thrashed me. Tomorrow, I get my revenge.”
Elizabeth reached for his other cuff. “Do you like my friends?”
“Of course I do. He’s quite sharp, isn’t he?”
“Mr. Grey? Constance says so, but like you, I hadn’t met him until today. Then you agree they might help us?”
Humphrey scowled. He did that a lot, bless him, though mostly he meant nothing by it. “Probably more use than those policemen,” he growled. “But we shall see.” He raised his gaze from the threaded cuff link to her face. “They are…discreet people, are they not?”
“No one is more discreet than Constance. And he must be cut from the same cloth. But I can’t see why it matters particularly. If Frances truly was murdered, then everyone needs to know who did it.”
