I stared at Mr. Darcy. The puzzle pieces were falling into place almost faster than I could handle them. I knew now why I was feeling so strongly that things that were happening to me had happened before, and I knew now why there was so much blood, why it was a murder of blood—and most importantly of all—
“Miss Bennet?” Mr. Darcy asked. He looked rather alarmed. I am certain that my face must have gone quite white. “Are you quite well? Miss Bennet?”
I grabbed his arm. “Mr. Darcy. I have been a fool. I’ve had quite the wrong end of the case this whole time. You must help me fetch some policemen—I know who the murderer is!”
Chapter Seven:
A Person First
I gathered all the member of the Lawton family, as well as Mr. Hillford and Lt. Crawley, into the drawing room.
“This is rather unorthodox of me, I know,” I admitted, “but Mrs. Charles Lawton, Louisa, did ask me here so that I might be discreet. And as this is obviously a family matter, I thought I ought to present the truth to you all first before calling in the police.”
Everyone nodded, a few people shifting uneasily in their chairs. It always amazed me by how even innocent people will act nervously or guiltily when in a stressful situation, even if they know they are not the one in trouble.
“From the beginning, I have to admit, this case puzzled me,” I said. “Mostly because of the timing of the murder. How was it possible that nobody was nearby at the time of Mr. Lawton’s death? As you all now know, I had been called in by Mrs. Lawton to see who had stolen the pearls, and, in accordance with this, I had charted the movements of everyone about the house in case someone took the opportunity to check on the pearls and reveal where they were hidden.
“According to my notes, everyone was far away from the study when we heard the scream. But how could that be possible, when surely someone had to be there, someone had to slit Mr. Lawton’s throat?
“That was my first point of difficulty, and my greatest. There were two other matters, the first of which was the locked door. I did not understand that. A locked door is only useful if one is trying to establish, perhaps, a burglar coming in through a window. Yet a violent case like this made it clear to me that this could not be a common burglary—and the most valuable items that someone might have heard of and wish to steal—the pearls—had already been taken. Besides which, the windows were too small for an adult person to get into the room through that means, and I could not fathom someone reaching through the window and having Mr. Lawton draw close enough to have his throat slit, not even taking into account that Mr. Lawton was found nowhere near the window.
“The third point was the odd bit of rubber I found at the crime scene. It didn’t seem to go to anything. I could not learn what it could be a part of, for it went with nothing in the room. It did not fit with any article of clothing, so it had not been torn from the murderer’s outfit as they moved about the room.
“All in all, it seemed to me that the person who had stolen the pearls must be the person who had murdered Mr. Lawton. Perhaps he had found out who had taken them—and after all, he was a rather unpleasant man by all accounts. I hate to speak ill of the dead, but I confess my first couple of days here in his presence were not pleasant ones. Hatred of such a man combined with a monetary motive seemed quite sensible to me.
“But there was something that did not sit right with me, and that was how much blood there was at the scene. There was, in fact, too much blood. In my work with Mr. Holmes, he has often relayed to me the usefulness of a doctor’s knowledge, and has lent me some notebooks belonging to a friend of his who is a doctor, currently off in the wars. I knew that there was too much blood in this room for one human being. It had to be there for some other reason then—but why? To make a statement, but what sort of statement?
“I recalled what I had observed when I ran to the study door, for I was the first one there. There are, as you will notice if you go out into the hall, three statues brought from Italy by the late Mr. Lawton. But when I went into the hallway to investigate that night, I observed four.
“There was only one woman that night wearing a white dress and a white shawl who might be mistaken for one of the statues if she stood very still against the wall.” I looked over at Julia. “I confronted her. And she told me…”
“There was no one there!” Julia blurted out. “I went to talk to him, to speak to him—he had us under his thumb, you see, and this whole affair with the pearls was the last straw. I couldn’t bear it anymore. I came to ask him, on this holy day, to let Earnest and me go live somewhere else, away from him. But when I went to the door, there was this awful sound… the scream… and then I heard footsteps and I pressed myself up against the wall…”
She took a great, heaving breath. “But you must understand, I was quite alone! Nobody came out of the room!”
“Impossible!” Peter Lawton said, jumping to his feet. “Quite impossible!”
“That is what I thought, as well,” I said. “But then I remembered that the door was locked.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” George Lawton demanded.
“There was no reason for the door to be locked,” I explained. “Not unless the person wanted to make it look like an outside job, a burglar—or unless they needed the door locked to give them time.”
“Time?” Julia repeated.
I nodded. “Yes. With the door locked, it would take us time to get into the room, time for the room to look the way that the murderer wanted it to look—and it would stop anyone from entering the room before they heard that scream.”
“But why would anyone need the room locked before the murder was committed?” Louisa asked.
“Because the murder wasn’t committed when we heard the scream,” I said. I held up the little piece of rubber. “It was committed earlier. That was why an attempt was then made on Miss Grant’s life. Her presence in the hallway—learned about by the murderer in the process of everyone being interviewed—proved that nobody had come out of the room or was in the hallway when the scream was heard. That proved that the murder had to be committed earlier in the day, about two hours earlier, in fact. The scream was merely a distraction, a ploy to fool us.”
I showed them the piece of rubber. “Does this look like anything to any of you?”
Everyone shook their heads.
“It didn’t look like anything to me, either,” I said. “But then Mr. Holmes told me something in his letter, and I remembered what Fanny kept saying about the scream she heard—that it was inhuman, like a pig.
“I sent my sister Mary to look down in Meryton, and indeed, she found what I had thought she might.”
I held up the unused pig’s bladder. “This is known as a pig’s bladder, or the dying pig. It’s an amusing little toy, the sort of thing I would have used to give my sister Jane a fright when we were children. As the air is released, it makes this horrible wailing sound, rather like that of a dying pig.”
I demonstrated, and at once the room was filled with the same awful sound we’d heard the day before. Everyone cried out, the ladies covering their ears. Even the men winced in horror.
“That awful, wicked sound!” Fanny cried out.
“But why on earth should someone set that up to be heard?” Julia wondered. “Surely it would alert everyone to the murder. Was it not in the murderer’s favor that the death should go unnoticed for as long as possible?”
“Perhaps,” I said, “but in this case, the murderer needed an established time of death. We were supposed to believe that this was the sound of Mr. Lawton dying. That way we would never think he had been murdered earlier. And the locked door would prevent anyone going inside beforehand and discovering the body.”
“But who did this?” Louisa asked.
“That puzzled me for a long time. Everyone, after all, had a motive. Nobody liked Mr. Lawton. The psychology—that is, the temperament of the murderer… I had to ask myself what ki
nd of person would murder in such a bloody and brutal fashion? Charles and Earnest were both patient men, but such patience can come from suppressing anger until it builds up and builds up and finally is unleashed in a most horrible fashion. Miss Grant had often expressed her disdain for her future father-in-law and could easily have wanted him gone to free her fiancé. George and his wife were both in need of money. Peter was a man who boasted of the laws he might or might not have broken—could murder have been among his crimes?
“Even Louisa, who asked me here, might have done so in order to keep my suspicions away from her when she committed the murder to free her husband from his servitude. Anyone, in short, could have wanted to committed the murder. But who really needed to?
“And so, we come again to the blood,” I said. “I found it to be quite puzzling that someone should throw extra blood everywhere. Whatever for? Was it for dramatic effect, to scare everyone? But surely that would mean some kind of warning was being given and there was no such warning. But then, Mr. Holmes reminded me of a case he worked—a case where a word was written on the wall in blood.
“The word, rache, was German for revenge. It was, Mr. Holmes told me, rather dramatic and one might even say foolish to write that word. However, to the killer, the message conveyed was more important than logic. Therefore, I had to ask myself, what sort of message was being conveyed with the excess of blood?
“And then I talked with Thomas Hillford—and I knew.”
Mr. Hillford looked at me in surprise. “Whatever do you mean?” he asked.
“I mean, sir, that you are the illegitimate son of Mr. Lawton. Mary has sought your family out—your mother died only weeks ago. I suspect it was in a deathbed confession, was it not, that she told you of your true father and the reason for the schism between your adoptive father Mr. Hillford and his childhood best friend, Mr. Lawton?
“It was good of him to raise you as his own. I never met Mr. Hillford, of course, but I can imagine given your strength of character and his choosing to raise you, given that you only learned of your true parentage upon your mother’s death, that he was a good and upright man.”
“He was a good man,” Mr. Hillford said passionately. “The best of men. Most men should have cast my mother aside after what happened and left her and her child to roam the streets. Not my father. He gave me his name, treated me as his own child, gave me the best education that his money could buy. I never once suspected the truth of my parentage, not until my mother confessed as she lay dying. But how ever did you find out the truth?”
“I deduced, given that your visit was mere weeks after your mother’s death, that it was her death that spurred you to visit. But why, if your father was the one who knew Mr. Lawton as a child, should it be your mother’s death that inspired you to come here?
“Then there were the little behavioral quirks that I observed. All the Lawton sons have a habit of clenching their left hand, as do you. While I had never observed you smoking, I saw the tobacco stain upon your finger and knew you are in the habit—just as the Lawton men are. The lopsided smile and the habit of covering your mouth when you laugh… your adoptive father taught you your character, Mr. Hillford, but your biological father passed down some little physical traits, ones that you did not even realize you had inherited from him.”
“And so he killed Father?” Earnest asked, sounding horrified. “For revenge?”
I shook my head. “No. I did think that, perhaps, for a moment, but again, I had been recording everyone’s movements about the house. If the murderer was someone who was staying in this house, then the scream was unnecessary. All the scream did was establish a time the murder could not have been committed before. Surely, if one was staying in the house, it would be best to keep the room locked and let the body grow cold for as long as possible, in order to confuse further the time of death, to make one wonder at what time of day this could possibly have occurred—no one had seen Mr. Lawton all day, after all, so the murder could have happened from breakfast onward.
“Unless… unless it was a person who was not staying in the house. Who had seen Mr. Lawton that day after breakfast. Someone who needed everyone to believe that Mr. Lawton was murdered at a specific time in order to give himself an alibi.
“The blood, you see, and Mr. Hillford—that was what gave me the motive. This was a crime of blood. The murderer, against reason and logic, wanted all who saw the body to know that this was a crime not just of passion, not just of hatred, but of blood. Mr. Lawton’s blood. His own flesh and blood rising up against him.
“You see, Mr. Lawton already had one illegitimate son, Mr. Hillford. He slept with his best friend’s fiancé. In my experience, a man who has done something such as that once will have done it before, and will do it again. A man does not simply take advantage of a lady once and then leave it at that. It is a habit.
“And so, if Mr. Lawton had one illegitimate son, was it not possible that he had more? That he had left more than one young lady to the mercy of an uncaring and unforgiving world?
“Mrs. Hillford had been fortunate, for her husband had forgiven her and stood by her, had raised her son as his own and never breathed a word about his true parentage. But there are others who are not so lucky, others who might not have had caring fiancés, or even fiancés at all. Others who might, in fact, be lower class… for if a man dares to do such a thing with a gentleman’s daughter, you can be certain that he has done it with the servant girls. For if he does not care for the standing and respect of a woman of his own ranking, why should he care for the standing of a woman below him in rank? A mere servant?”
I whirled to face Lt. Crawley. “When Louisa first told me that you were here about the pearls, I took her at her word. You yourself said that Mr. Lawton had summoned an officer here for the purpose of looking into things. Yet, when I asked Louisa to go through the day again in detail, she told me that you did not tell her you were here for the pearls. You said that you were here to inquire as to a possible theft. Louisa then merely assumed, through association, that you were here about the pearls.
“But you were not, Lt. Crawley, were you? You made up a—do pardon my French—cock and bull story, about a possible theft, knowing that Mr. Lawton was a rich man and knowing that as a concerned militia man, a servant of the law and the Empire, that Mr. Lawton would let you in. There actually being a theft in the family was merely a fortunate coincidence, one you did not even learn of until you were in the room and spoke to Mr. Lawton.
“We forget, I think… all we see is the uniform. I know that is all that my younger sisters once saw: a handsome uniform. The man himself was secondary. But we learned, painfully, that on the contrary, a man in uniform is a person first, a man first and an officer second. And officers have mothers… and fathers…”
Lt. Crawley had gone quite pale. His left hand was at his side, clenched. “You have the Lawton habits, as well,” I said. “The same as your half-brothers. No wonder I had such a sense of déjà vu staying in this place. I had six men about me who all laughed the same way, smiled the same way, showed their displeasure the same way. For someone trained in observation such as myself, it was giving me quite a headache and I did not even know why.
“A simple inquiry by my sister Mary with your superior officer told me the story, Lieutenant. He left your mother to suffer terribly. What he did to her was unforgivable.”
“What did he do?” Louisa asked quietly.
“Mary Crawley was a parlor maid in this house when Mr. Lawton was growing up. He got her pregnant and refused to provide for her. Her pregnancy was discovered and she was put out of the house. She had to turn to walking the streets, as one might say, in order to provide for herself and her son.
“It was quite lucky for her boy, Henry, that one of her clients was able to pull some strings and get him into the militia, provide him with a recommendation. I am certain that few people knew the truth of his background—and your superior officer could only tell
me that she was, well, what she was, and had got that way through the behavior of a gentleman in whose house she had been a maid.
“She must have suffered greatly. And when you learned that you were to be stationed in Meryton, you saw your chance. You had a good reputation, had been a commendable soldier. There had been a rash of petty thefts in the area recently. It would be child’s play to gain access to Mr. Lawton. To slit the throat of an ailing, elderly man is nothing for a strong man such as yourself.
“But suspicion could not fall upon you, so you rigged up your little pig’s bladder. I fancy you had it tied to a string that led outside the window. A pull upon the string—using one of those little knots that are designed to come undone when you pull—and the unearthly wail would alert everyone in the house to the exact time Mr. Lawton had been killed.
“Placing yourself as the investigating party, though, that was hubris. I suppose you thought that it would help you finger one of the family members as the guilty party. All of them had motive. Mr. Lawton was, after all, quite the unpleasant character. And I must admit that most criminals I have met in my time have an overestimation of their own cleverness. I have only met one who has managed to be worthy of the respect to which she afforded herself, and you are certainly not on her level.”
Everyone was staring openmouthed either at myself or at Lt. Crawley.
“A military man,” Fanny breathed, disbelieving.
“I must say,” Peter began, then paused, then started again, “I must say, Miss Bennet, that is quite—well, let us just say that I am most deeply mired in admiration for you.”
I looked steadily at Lt. Crawley, who had been growing redder in the face this entire time. “Well, sir?” I asked.
“You damned woman!” he burst out. “You’re a damnable woman, and I’m glad he’s dead! You should have seen how she suffered! The way the men treated her, what it did to her body, her youth! She died sick and in the worst pain your selfish little minds can imagine, all of you brought up in wealth. Oh, yes, he was a bastard of a man, but at least he provided for you, all of you, even when you didn’t deserve it and squandered his money. He gave her not a cent, used her and then left her to die a slow death. Yes, I’m quite glad he’s dead, and I’m glad that I was the one who got to do it!”
The Case of the Patriarch Page 5
