Page 67 of Evidence of Evil
“I think she was smothered with a pillow,” Solomon blurted.
Constance stared at him as he began to walk on up the road, though she caught up with him quickly. “Why?”
He shrugged. “It would leave no marks of a struggle. She was wearing her nightgown. There probably are medical signs ofsmothering, but no one would have looked for them when they thought she had drowned.”
“We could call on Dr. Laing, but I think I might have annoyed him enough for one day.”
“Let’s keep to our original plan for now,” Solomon said. “If we can discover where Frances met her lover, it might tell us all we need to know.”
It proved to be a long and frustrating afternoon in many ways. Having walked a brisk fifteen minutes beyond the Grange gates, they turned onto narrower tracks, examining every cottage, farmhouse, barn, and hut they saw. With the aid of the map Constance had consulted at The Willows, they cut across country where necessary, keeping to around the same distance around the Grange estate.
“It seems John Niall told me the truth,” Constance said. “There don’t seem to be any unoccupied buildings remotely suitable for a lovers’ tryst. Perhaps the short meetings were merely to pass notes or plans to meet elsewhere at a greater distance.”
“Perhaps, though I doubt her body could have been easily carried from a much greater distance,” Solomon argued. “Besides…was she that giddy a girl? She liked excitement, liked to break the rules. But if you are right, she was not devoted to this lover but to Humphrey. Unless her loverwasHumphrey.”
Constance sighed, pausing to glance around at the drainage ditch below them and the open fields beyond, then back up to the woodland behind that they had just passed through. “I don’t believe it was him. Certainly, he is away from Elizabeth a good deal during the day, about estate business and so on, but he never leaves her alone at night.”
Solomon glanced at her in surprise. “You asked her?”
“How else were we to know?”
“How do you know she told you the truth? We have already agreed she is protective of him. The truth is, we don’t want to believe it.”
“Elizabeth asked for my help.Shedoesn’t believe it. Solomon—”
But Solomon was distracted by the distant sound of hoofbeats. They came from the bridle path that formed the boundary between Fairfield Grange and The Willows land. Solomon did not particularly want to be discovered on the wrong side of it by anyone more influential than the tenant farmers and servants they had encountered already. A horseman surely meant Colonel Niall or his son. Still, it was more curiosity than embarrassment that caused him to throw his arm around Constance’s waist, sweep her forward, and jump into the ditch.
Chapter Fourteen
Dropping to acrouch as he landed, Solomon dragged Constance down with him and whipped off both their hats with his free hand in case they poked up out of the ditch. Fortunately, the weather had been fine for some time, and the ditch was dry.
Which didn’t stop Constance’s glaring at him. She opened her mouth, no doubt to give him the verbal blistering he deserved, so he hastily dropped the hats and put one finger to her lips.
He was not wearing gloves, and the touch was unimaginably intimate. He held her crouching body close against his to prevent her keeling over. She was curved and fragile and he could smell her skin, and the floral perfume in her hair that was uniquely Constance. Her parted lips were so soft under his fingertip that he knew a powerful urge to trace their shape in a slow, sensual caress.
The rhythm of her breath quickened as she stared at him, her expression changing from stunned curiosity to…what? Something gentler. She had the most beautiful eyes of anyone he had ever seen, layers of sorrow and sweetness and joy, a profound compassion that had always drawn him, and, surely, a mysterious, enticing passion.
It was she who freed her gaze first, releasing him to concentrate on the beating hooves that had led him to this moment of confusion. He let his finger fall from her mouthas she turned her head away. He knew he should release her completely, but he didn’t want her to lose her footing. Really.
He had never forgotten the feel of her in his arms the first time they met on a foggy night in London, when he had whisked her out of the path of a falling body. That purely instinctive response had got lost somewhere in the fascinating contradictions that were Constance Silver. And they had to be lost again now as the single horseman rode around the bridle track toward the wood.
Very carefully, he released her and raised his head above the parapet, as it were. The rider was not John Niall. He was older, straighter, grayer.
“Colonel Niall,” he murmured.
Constance shuddered, causing him to glance at her in sudden anxiety. Did she regard him like Darby? She wasn’t looking at him but continued to shake. Hastily, he shifted position and found her whole face brimming with hilarity. She was laughing, silently and uncontrollably.
Perhaps it was relief, but suddenly his own lips twitched as mirth surged up. He knew without words they were both imagining being caught in this ridiculous position.
“Perhaps we should just have wished him good afternoon,” she said unsteadily.
“We can run after him if you like.” As Colonel Niall vanished into the trees, Solomon picked up the hats, plonked them on their respective heads, and climbed out of the ditch before reaching down to help Constance.
This time, he kept his hold impersonal and brief. Stupidly, he felt too shaken to do anything else. Though he thanked God for the gift of laughter.
Constance pointed with the hand he had just released. “There’s a building of some sort down there. It looks like a barn.”
“It’s on Maule’s land,” Solomon said, “but it must be within our fifteen minutes’ walk from the Nialls’ house. We can probably guess what’s in it, but for the sake of thoroughness, let’s look.”
