Page 86 of Ghost in the Garden
Fraser clawed one hand through his hair. “What copies? I told you, I wouldn’t risk it!”
“Don’t want word to get around that you sold your wife to Lambert for a few dresses?” Solomon asked.
Fraser flushed angrily and took a hasty step forward. Solomon raised one eyebrow, and Fraser’s fist unclenched. He knew exactly what he had done, whether through greed or complaisance.
“Iris went last night to end it,” he said urgently. “Neither of us could take it anymore. We’re looking for a new place, as proper caretakers. I’d have thrown those keys away as soon as she got home, whether or not Lambert turned up his toes.”
“Could anyone have broken in here and taken the keys without your knowledge?” Constance asked.
“I don’t see how,” Fraser said, tugging at his hair again. “One of us is usually here.”
“Did anyone ask to borrow the keys? Offer to buy them?”
“No,” Fraser said bitterly. “I wish they had. Then I wouldn’t have had to throw them out the bleeding window.”
*
“It has tobe someone in the Lamberts’ house,” Constance said discontentedly. She now had both keys in her reticule and several fewer coins. “Which means someone is lying.”
“It means they’re all lying,” Solomon corrected her.
Her stomach twisted. She knew it was true. The question was, were they covering for themselves or Angela? Were they even lying on her instructions? Was she trying to protect one of them? Unlikely, if they had murdered her beloved husband.
The carriage stopped at Scotland Yard, and Solomon instructed it to wait. Inside, they were told Inspector Harris was not in the station. Constance was about to hand over the keys with a message when Sergeant Flynn appeared, escorting a man handcuffed to a uniformed police officer.
“Hello!” he said, looking startled to see them. “Are you waiting for the inspector?”
“Or you, if you have a moment,” Solomon said.
“I do. Just finished a different murder case.”
Constance glanced after the handcuffed man, who seemed to have put up no kind of fight. His shoulders were slumped, not defeated so much as…lost.
“A difficult one?” Solomon asked.
Flynn sighed. “No. If it’s not rot for robbery, it’s nearly always the husband. What can I do for you?”
As Constance blindly handed over the keys and Solomon explained their significance, the sergeant’s words echoed in her head.
“It’s nearly always the husband.”
The very intimacy of marriage intensified every emotion, every rage or sense of injustice. Had she been trying not to see it all along? Angela had been alone in the dining room when Lambert went in search of the wine. They only had Duggin’s word that he had lingered with her at all…
It’s nearly always the husband.
Or the wife.
Chapter Eighteen
“To the office?”Solomon suggested.
“No.” Constance marched toward the hackney stand. “Back to the Lamberts’. And this time by the back door. You’re right. The servants are all lying to the police, but they might not lie to me. Not if Harris has left, at any rate.”
“Then let’s go and see.”
Though his words agreed, his tone was wary, and she knew he would insist on coming with her. In truth, though she might despise herself for it, she felt safer with him there. After all, she had no idea how far Angela had taken the others into her confidence. And Constance had refused a well-paid position with her. Did that make her suspicious?
Alighting from the hackney, they walked in at the front gates and around the side of the house to the back door.
