Page 77 of Evidence of Evil
“Why?” he managed. “What did you learn from him? Or from the police?”
She shook her head impatiently, whirling to face him. “Nothing we did not already know. But he is too honest, Solomon, too hurt andsoftinside. He loves Elizabeth, but he could no more kill another woman who threatened her than she could. Nor could he conduct an affair behind her back, on his own doorstep, not from lust and not from blackmail.”
“And his first wife? Could he have killed her?”
She gazed at him. “Do you think he could have?”
“We have no evidence either way. But…no, I don’t see it.”
“We have no physical evidence at all,” Constance said. “And if there is none to be had, then we have only what we do know or feel to solve the puzzle.” She swung abruptly toward the door. “Let’s go up to our room.”
Cynically, Solomon supposed there were any number of men who would have given their right arms to hear such an invitation from Constance Silver. If only for the bragging opportunities.Unforgivable…
He followed her out of the drawing room. At the top of the stairs, he heard Elizabeth cross the hall below and enter the study. Metaphorically, he crossed his fingers for them.
The maids had not yet lit the bedroom lamps, so he and Constance did, before she grasped all the letter paper from their desk and a sharpened pencil from the drawer, then sank to the floor in a flurry of skirts that folded around her like a pretty, silken nest.
“We know character,” she said. “So we know neither Elizabeth nor Humphrey are guilty.”
“Very well.”
“They both saw Frances walking away from the lake by the path that leads to the road, just after ten o’clock the night she died.” She seemed to merely scribble on the paper, and yet what appeared was the small, neat lettering he had seen before.
“Where did you learn to read and write?” he asked, because he had wondered for months. “At school?”
“My mother taught me.” She paused, casting him a quick glance as though, belatedly, she wondered if she had given away too much.
He kept his gaze bland. “Who was your mother?”
“Whoismy mother,” she corrected him. “Pray you never find out. We don’t think Frances went home. If she did, she entered the house secretly, probably by the window as we did. If she didn’t, where did she go?”
Solomon sat astride the desk chair, resting his arms along its back so that he could see what she was writing. “Somewhere she kept the nightgown she was found in, which her maid had not seen for months. Presumably the place she met her lover. Though would you need a nightgown for such a tryst?”
To his surprise, color seeped along the delicate lines of her cheekbones. “Perhaps it depends on the nightgown. Or howwarm the trysting place. Which we believe to be no more than fifteen minutes’ walk from Fairfield Grange.”
“And we found no such likely place. No abandoned cottages or even derelict huts or hidden caves or empty potting sheds. Apart from Sarah Phelps’s barn. If Frances ran, she could probably have got to the lake boathouse in fifteen minutes, but there’s hardly room to swing a cat in there, let alone lie down in acute discomfort.”
“Then we’re left with occupied houses,” Constance said thoughtfully. She sighed. “Which is hardly feasible. No such affair could have been conducted in secret. But for the sake of it, which occupied houses could she have reached? The Fairfield gardener’s cottage, Waterside Farmhouse…”
“The cow byre at Waterside, which is hardly salubrious,” Solomon added. “And the large barn at the Grange, which is constantly busy and has nowhere to hide. The same with the stables and the carriage house, both of which have servants living above them.”
Constance wrote it all down, adding quick notes. “Where else? Dr. Laing’s cottage, which is constantly full of people, and his shed is full of pots and herbs.”
“Sarah Phelps’s house, and The Willows,” Solomon finished. “Also constantly full of people—or person—in their own ways, with nowhere to hide. Even if her lover were a servant—and we think she had grown out of that particular taste—how could they have met at The Willows with no one knowing?”
Constance met his gaze. “Someonecouldknow. She could have blackmailed them to silence. We know she used such tricks to get her own way. What if it were Darby? He could run rings around his wife, ride over here whenever he chose.”
“Hiding his horse where?” Solomon asked. “Making love to her where? Even supposing Frances could have found a secret way into The Willows—and I admit I wouldn’t put it past her, notleast to punish Humphrey and Elizabeth—surely any of the staff here could and should have seen the signs. Mrs. Haslett might not like Elizabeth, but she would never keep such an outrage from Maule.”
Constance threw down her pencil with frustration. “It’s the secrecy that is so impossible! She could never have rushed down here so often without someone noticing! She might have forced poor Worcester to silence, but think of everyone who must have seen her rushing—and she would need to have rushed to get here within fifteen minutes—and for what? A quick kiss before she turned and ran back? It makes no sense.”
“You’re right,” Solomon said slowly. “It has to be the Grange. With someone who had every right to be there.”
Her breath caught. Incest was not as unheard of as decent people thought, even among the most vocally righteous. And Frances had been undeniably troubled… But John had been a child when they left for India, and the colonel had had her watched in the subcontinent if not at home. Surely he would not have done so with such a gross secret to hide. But still, the Grange was a distinct possibility for other assignations.
“Locked doors,” she said. “Attics. Frances ruled the roost at Fairfield. She could keep the servants away from wherever she chose. She might even have pretended to go out, to stop people looking for her, when in reality she crept straight back in again. Oh, the devil, Sol, we have to go back to that house!”
Chapter Sixteen
