Annoyance flickered across Lady Charlotte’s face, but before she could give vent to it, Seymore said, “Mr. Daventry told us that he dined at the house of one George Mallinson on the evening of July the thirteenth. Were you present as well?”
“July the thirteenth?” She paused, then gave a dismissive shrug. “No, I was not.”
“May I ask where you were instead?”
“In Berkshire, visiting my sister Henrietta. She was widowed at this time last year, and, not wishing to mark such a sad anniversary alone, requested my presence. I was away for no more than three days.”
“And your sister can attest to your presence there?” Seymore inquired.
“Of course.” Lady Charlotte sounded almost impatient.
If Sophie’s glance had not strayed for just a moment, she might have missed Marianne’s sudden start at those words, then the flush that mounted almost to her hairline—a flush that looked almost… guilty. But what had that shy creature to feel guilty about?
One always overlooked Marianne, Sophie realized. As she existed in the shadow of a charismatic uncle and a domineering aunt, that was hardly surprising. And yet surely she must have thoughts, opinions, and feelings of her own. Thomas had wanted to draw out the girl’s true self in her portrait, only to be continually thwarted by Lady Charlotte’s overbearing presence.
Could Marianne be the key? What might the girl know about her aunt or uncle that could prove helpful? Or knock a hole in the fortifications that Lady Charlotte was attempting to erect about herself and her husband? Clearly something was amiss here—and it jarred on Sophie like a wrong note in an aria. She glanced toward the two policemen, who had drawn aside and appeared to be conferring on something—the Daventrys’ apparently unshakable alibis, perhaps.
“Miss—Tresilian, is it?”
Startled by the sound of her name, Sophie turned her head to find Lady Charlotte eyeing her with mingled curiosity and censure.
“I confess, I am surprised to see you here,” the older woman remarked. “Indeed, I cannot conceive how this concerns you in the least.”
Sophie looked straight at her and summoned her most ingenuous expression. “I am here to support Mr. Pendarvis, Lady Charlotte. He is a dear family friend, as well as my brother’s business partner. And I happened to be present when he first received the tragic news of his wife’s murder.”
“How distressing for you,” Lady Charlotte said coldly.
“Oh, far more distressing for him,” Sophie insisted, ignoring the probing look she could sense Robin directing at her. “And for his young daughter too.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Marianne bite her lip, even as her gaze remained fixed on the floor. Compelled by some instinct she could not yet identify, Sophie went on, “Such a sad thing, to lose a parent so early. And in such—violent circumstances,” she added with a shudder. “Especially since her younger brother died only a few months previously.”
The other men were also staring at Sophie now, no doubt wondering at her sudden effusiveness. Robin and Thomas, at least, both knew she wasn’t the sort to gush like this. Sophie could only hope they guessed she might be doing so for a reason.
“My heart just… breaks for little Sara.” She let her voice quaver; no hardship as the sentiment was wholly true, though she would never have expressed it so blatantly, especially to an unsympathetic stranger. “Seven years old is far too young to lose your mother.”
“Indeed.” Lady Charlotte’s voice and expression were as cold as ever, but Marianne had glanced up sharply at that, revealing a stricken face and suspiciously liquid eyes. Sophie wondered fleetingly how old the girl had been when she was orphaned.
“And she’s so frightened too, because of the terrible way poor Nathalie died,” Sophie continued, noting how Marianne had now pressed one hand to her mouth. “Mr. Pendarvis says she wakes up screaming from bad dreams every night.”
Lady Charlotte’s eyes sparked, a flash of temper as sudden as it was surprising. “I don’t doubt this is all very affecting, Miss Tresilian. But if Mrs. Pendarvis had devoted more attention to her child and less to other women’s husbands, perhaps this tragedy could have been avoided!”
And there it was: the first crack in that icy facade, and the glimpse of hot fury beneath.
Sophie wasn’t the only one shocked by the venom in her words. She felt Robin stiffen beside her, heard Marianne utter a soft, distressed cry, and saw Daventry, formerly dazed and enervated, jerk upright in his chair like one galvanized.
“Charlotte!” he protested hoarsely.
Ignoring both her husband and her niece, Lady Charlotte turned to Seymore. “Inspector, I believe we have answered your most pertinent questions for the time being. It has been established and can be verified that neither Mr. Daventry nor myself were anywhere near Cornwall when Mrs. Pendarvis was murdered. Now, if you have concluded your business here, would you—all of you,” she added, with another sweeping glance over the room, “be so good as to see yourselves out? We have a dinner engagement this evening.”
Sophie stifled a rush of disappointment. She’d felt so close to breaking through, certain that Marianne might be on the verge of saying something, but the girl had retreated into cowed silence. She could not look at Robin; he’d been so sure this visit would yield the answers they were seeking. And here was Lady Charlotte, masterfully preparing to sweep all else before her. Taunton was shifting from foot to foot, and even Seymore looked uneasy now, clearly racking his brain for a way to prolong his investigation in the face of such high-handedness.
“Lady Charlotte,” he began doggedly.
She contrived to look down her nose at him, aided by her considerable height. “I hope I will not be obliged to report you for insolence, Inspector.”
The colors were about to be struck, Sophie sensed with a sinking heart.
“No, wait!” a shaky female voice broke in.
And all heads turned toward Marianne, white as paper and trembling like an aspen, but determination etched on her every feature. Sophie was suddenly reminded of Constance Nankivell, unexpectedly strong beneath her soft, mild exterior, and prayed that Marianne might be finding some of that hidden strength in herself.
“I have—I have something to say,” the girl began haltingly.
“What is it, Miss Daventry?” Seymore said gently.
Lady Charlotte made an impatient gesture. “Really, Marianne, what can you possibly—”
“My uncle has an alibi,” Marianne interrupted, her voice still not entirely unsteady. “He was in London, when Mrs. Pendarvis was killed. But my aunt was not.”
Lady Charlotte said, as though addressing a backwards child, “You know very well I was in Berkshire, Marianne—visiting your Aunt Henrietta.”
“That’s what you said,” Marianne countered, shooting her a nervous but defiant glance. “You even left me behind, which you’ve never done before. All these years, you’ve scarcely allowed me out of your sight or permitted me to take a breath without your approving it first!”
“I hardly see what this signifies,” Lady Charlotte began, but Marianne rushed on.
“I couldn’t believe you’d leave me to myself for three whole days! I was so grateful to Aunt Hen for inviting you, I didn’t care that I hadn’t been included. Except”—she paused, breathless and still trembling slightly—“the morning after you’d gone, a letter from her arrived—mailed two days before, from the Lake District.”
The words fell into the silence like stones in a millpond, the ripples spreading far and wide. Marianne looked directly at her guardian for the first time since she’d begun to speak. “Aunt Hen wasn’t in Berkshire. And neither were you.”
For just a moment, Lady Charlotte stared at her niece, nonplussed. Then she rallied, “Rubbish, Marianne—you don’t know what you’re talking about! My sister can verify everything I’ve said—”
“Oh, I don’t doubt Aunt Hen would lie for you!” Marianne struck in. “And that’s what it would be, wo
uldn’t it? A lie! Blood’s thicker than water, after all!”
“That certainly doesn’t appear to be true in your case,” her aunt observed caustically.
Marianne flushed. “I did keep quiet, at first. Because I thought you’d taken a lover—the way Uncle Guy had taken a mistress. What had I to say to that? Sauce for the goose, after all.”
Lady Charlotte’s nostrils flared in distaste. “Don’t be vulgar, Marianne.” She spoke as if to be vulgar were the worst insult she could confer upon anyone.
The girl lifted her chin defiantly. “I’d rather be vulgar than a murderess!”
Lady Charlotte’s hand flashed out in a vicious slap, the force of it almost knocking Marianne off her feet. Daventry sprang from his chair with an incoherent oath, and Sophie found she too was now standing—and staring like everyone else at Lady Charlotte’s livid face.
“For that unpardonable insult, you are confined to your room until further notice!” Her splendid voice was harsh with rage and the effort to contain it.
“I won’t go!” Tears stood in Marianne’s eyes, and her cheek burned scarlet from the blow, but still she stood her ground.
Lady Charlotte’s hand rose once more, only to be caught and held fast by Thomas.
Daventry strode forward. “You will not strike her again!”
The inspectors had moved as well, now flanking Marianne on either side. “There’s to be no intimidation of the witness, Lady Charlotte,” Seymore ordered.
“A fine witness!” Lady Charlotte scoffed, raking Marianne with a contemptuous glare. “A foolish, spiteful child, seeking to avenge imagined slights!” She wrested her hand free from Thomas’s grip and turned ostentatiously away from her niece. “And hysterical as well,” she added. “How can you trust the word of one who leaps from A to Zed as she does?”
“I’m not!” Marianne protested, but fell silent when her uncle held up his hand and approached his wife—warily, as one might approach a coiled serpent or a crouching panther.
Daventry swallowed, not taking his eyes from his wife. “Where were you, Charlotte?”
Her face was set and stony. “I told you. With my sister.”
The disbelief in the room was palpable. Seymore cleared his throat. “Lady Charlotte, if you’ll just come with us now—”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous!” she exclaimed, rounding on him impatiently. “May I remind you, Inspector, that your own witness described the murderer as a tall, thin man? I should say that conclusively rules me out.”
“But it doesn’t,” Sophie said. “Not at all.”
And seven pairs of shocked eyes turned in her direction.
***
She could not have said at what point the idea took hold. When Lady Charlotte had spoken so callously of Sara as well as Nathalie, perhaps. Or when she had struck Marianne with such force, her rage stripping her face of any vestige of feminine softness.
A tall, thin man…
A tall lean woman, with a deep voice and strong, almost masculine features. In the right clothes, in the right light… she could pass for a man. Glimpsed through a barely open door, in the darkness, a frightened lady’s maid would see only what she expected to see.
Nathalie, too, might not have troubled to look closely—if she’d even seen her attacker. Had she known, or guessed what might have happened, when she felt the garrote tightening about her throat?
Seymore was eyeing her speculatively. “Miss Tresilian, would you care to explain that?”
“Certainly,” Sophie replied. “I think it’s quite possible that, while she was supposedly in Berkshire, Lady Charlotte traveled down to Cornwall, disguised herself as a man, and killed Nathalie Pendarvis.”
She infused the words with all the conviction she could muster, knowing how outlandish they would sound once they left the safety of her own head. And indeed, she sensed the doubt emanating from her listeners the moment she’d finished speaking—even Robin. But deep within her soul, she felt increasingly sure that she was right.
Lady Charlotte gave an incredulous laugh. “Disguise myself as a man, Miss Tresilian? What an extraordinary idea!”
“Not so extraordinary.” Sophie met her gaze squarely. “You played breeches parts when you were younger. Hamlet, Romeo—I heard you were quite good. And you could still pass for a man, in the right clothes. An overcoat. Trousers. A hat, pulled down over your face.” She emphasized each item, hoping that at least one person in the room would be able to envision what she described. Thomas, perhaps, if no one else; he must surely remember Lady Charlotte’s thespian efforts. “Modern fashions would conceal far more than doublet and hose. And, of course, darkness would help maintain the illusion.”
Lady Charlotte was staring at her now—and for the first time, Sophie saw a glimmer of unease in her eyes.
“You stayed at the Pendarvis Hotel at Easter, along with Mr. Daventry,” Sophie continued. “Perhaps, thanks to the detective you hired, you already knew that his mistress lived there. And perhaps,” she took a breath and ventured into uncharted territory, “perhaps you discovered later that she was with child by him again.”
The leaching of color from the older woman’s face told her all she needed to know. The quality of the silence, no longer skeptical but crackling with tension, told her the rest.
“My God,” Daventry breathed, staring at his wife. “It’s—it’s true. You killed Nathalie.”
“A baby,” Marianne choked out. “You killed a woman who was expecting a baby!”
“I rid us all of a worthless little parasite!” Lady Charlotte spat, her control slipping at last, beyond recovery. She rounded on her husband, who recoiled from the naked fury on her face.
“All these years I kept your secret! While your little French trollop tried to bleed us dry, supporting your bastard!”
Daventry flinched at the ugly word. So did Robin. Thomas was staring at his cousin as if he’d never seen her before.
Lady Charlotte swept on, years of pent-up bitterness spilling from her in a torrent. “I’d thought, when he died, there’d be an end to it. But then,” she laughed harshly, “oh, then I intercepted her next letter to you! All tears and Gallic effusions—and a quite blatant demand for money, to support your newest by-blow!” Her lips twisted. “She added a few threats to her repertoire as well. It would have started all over again—and I wasn’t about to let that happen.”
“But an unborn baby…” Daventry said, almost pleadingly.
Lady Charlotte’s face hardened, but not before Sophie saw the flash of desolation in her eyes. “Had we been blessed with children, would you have been so quick to give away what was rightfully theirs?”
“How did you get her to open the door to you?” Robin’s voice was eerily calm, as if he’d gained all the control Lady Charlotte had lost; Sophie could only guess at the storm raging beneath the surface of his composure.
Lady Charlotte glanced at him, almost indifferently, as if she’d forgotten he was there. Perhaps she had; Daventry was the focus of her outrage. “It took little enough. Just a glimpse of all the money I’d brought. She was counting it when I—did what I had come to do.” Unconsciously, her hands clenched, twisted, as though stretching the garrote tight between them.
Sophie saw a muscle jerk in Robin’s jaw and knew he was picturing Nathalie’s last moments. She slipped her hand into his cold one, felt him grasp it like a lifeline.
Lady Charlotte’s lips curved in a travesty of a smile. “I thought it fitting that she died fondling what she cherished most in life.”
At that last piece of viciousness, Daventry broke.
“Murderess!” He lunged at his wife, hands reaching for her throat, but Thomas and Taunton each seized him by an arm and held him off, still struggling in their grasp.
Seymore began, “Lady Charlotte Daventry, you are under arrest for—”
Marianne, already ghost-pale, moaned and slumped to the floor.
For just a moment, everyone’s attention was on her… and Lady Cha
rlotte made her move, launching herself toward the open doorway and freedom.
Seymore reached for her a second too late, before stumbling over the chair she overturned directly in his path. The drawing room doors slammed shut, even as he struggled to his feet, and he and Taunton seized upon the doorknobs, rattling them furiously and to no avail.
“She’s wedged the door!” Seymore reported over his shoulder, as Taunton cursed and wrestled still more vigorously with the knob.
“Grimsby!” Daventry roared, coming to pound on the doors as well. “Let us out!”
Sophie looked up from the sofa, on which she had deposited the unconscious Marianne. “Pull the bell rope,” she advised tartly.
Thomas, mouth twitching slightly, proceeded to do just that.
Robin, meanwhile, had picked up the fireplace poker and gone to the inspectors’ aid. “We might be able to jar the doors loose with this.”
A series of thrusts, combined with the forceful application of muscle, breached the doors and sent the Louis Quatorze chair Lady Charlotte had used as a barricade skittering across the floor. Breathless, the men stumbled out into the passage just as an astonished footman arrived on the scene.
“Where’s Lady Charlotte?” Daventry rapped out. “Did she pass you coming down?”
“No, sir,” the footman began—and was cut short by a chilling scream from above.
Daventry ran for the stairs at top speed, both inspectors at his heels. Robin, Sophie, and Thomas followed only a little more slowly.
They’d reached the second-floor landing when she came stumbling toward them—a black-clad housemaid, her face as white as her apron, shaking from head to toe.
“Jane!” Daventry caught her about the shoulders. “What’s happened?”
She gulped and shuddered, tears spilling down her pale cheeks. “Oh, sir, it’s—it’s her ladyship! She ran right past me. She… she… straight out the window—” The housemaid gestured shakily back the way she had come.
Toward the stairs leading up to the third floor.
Pamela Sherwood Page 36
