Chapter Four

I t was only very gradually that the house fell back into darkness and silence.

Constance lay in the comfortable bed she had been given for the week under false pretenses and wished it was dawn, when she would have to stay awake. Instead, she drifted into uneasy sleep, full of dreams of blood and violence that were half nonsense and half memory. It meant that when daylight did wake her, she felt shaken and unrested and wanted to bolt for the safe home she had made for herself and her people.

Escape, however, proved not to be an option. When she joined the other subdued and uneasy guests in the breakfast parlor, she found the magistrate seated among them. He was an upright, elderly gentleman with a trim beard and whiskers who had the look of a retired army officer. And indeed, he was introduced as Colonel George.

“I’m afraid I must remove Mr. Winsom’s remains for the coroner to examine,” the colonel said. “And I have sent to London for the help we will need with so vile and serious a crime. I must ask you all to remain here at Greenforth until someone from Scotland Yard has spoken to you.”

“That is something of an imposition on the grieving family,” Mrs. Bolton demurred.

“Nonsense,” said Miriam Albright, who, pale and red-eyed between her husband and her sister, seemed to have stepped up to her mother’s role. Mrs. Winsom was understandably absent. “My mother will be comforted by your presence especially, and by the support of all her friends.” She tried to smile. “I am afraid you will be terribly bored, since there can be no question now of the entertainment that was planned.”

Colonel George rose from the table and bowed smartly. “Thank you for your time and your understanding. Once again, my condolences.”

Constance poured herself a cup of coffee and took a slice of toast from the sideboard, though she doubted she could eat it.

“What do they want with a parcel of strangers from London to find a madman in this neighborhood?” Randolph demanded. “Surely the local men will find the culprit more easily.”

“Not necessarily,” Solomon Grey said mildly. “It is certainly more comfortable to imagine a passing stranger did this…”

“ Comfortable? ” Ellen said in a choked voice. “If you imagine—”

“Forgive me, Miss Ellen,” Grey said. “A poor choice of word, and yet imagining an insane stranger committed this crime is really an illusion. The weapon came from the Greenforth kitchen, and there is no sign that anyone broke into the house.”

Ivor Davidson tugged at his collar. “You are saying someone in this house murdered Mr. Winsom?”

“It does seem the inescapable conclusion.” Grey sounded almost apologetic, but his dark eyes were anything but submissive. They were bright with intelligence and perception. “I do not say this to upset anyone, merely to warn you of the kind of questions we are likely to be asked.”

“Such as?” Davidson demanded.

“Such as where we were at the time the murder occurred, and”—Grey’s gaze flickered over everyone, so it might have been imagination that it lingered on Constance—“and exactly what was our relationship with Mr. Winsom.”

For several seconds, no one spoke.

“Who even found him?” Ellen asked into the stunned, awkward silence.

“I did,” Grey said calmly.

Ellen’s turbulent gaze met his. “And what were you doing in the garden in the middle of the night? Just taking a walk?”

Constance’s stomach twisted. She should admit to being with him, only…

“Not just ,” Grey admitted. “I was in the library not long after midnight when I thought I saw something move outside. I was curious enough to go out and look around. I found your father but not the culprit. I’m sorry,” he added gently.

Ellen’s gaze dropped to her untouched plate of eggs and bacon. “So am I,” she whispered.

Grey finished his coffee, set down the cup, and rose, excusing himself with a bow.

“Well,” Mrs. Bolton said with some resentment, “if it was anyone in the house who did such a thing, we should look first at him .”

“Why is that?” Constance asked.

“Because he was there , by his own admission,” Mrs. Bolton snapped. “And let’s face it, he is not one of us.”

Constance was not entirely free of her own suspicions, but at this, her hackles rose in defense of her fellow outsider. and she could not be silent. “ Not one of us ? You mean because he might bear the blood of the slaves whose cause you support so loyally?”

Mrs. Bolton flushed, her nostrils flaring with dislike, and Constance knew she had made an enemy.

“No,” Mrs. Bolton uttered. “I don’t mean that at all. It has nothing to do with his ancestry but with the fact that none of us knows him. Poor Deborah invited him on very little acquaintance. Walter had never even met him!”

“But he had heard of him,” Mr. Bolton said unexpectedly. “As had I. And Davidson, too, I imagine. He is, even I know, a sought-after guest.”

Mrs. Bolton waved one dismissive hand, but she said nothing further. Constance forced herself to take a bite of toast. All around the table, people were taking surreptitious glances at each other.

“One of the servants with a grudge?” Davidson murmured to Randolph, who shrugged impatiently.

“Unlikely. But then, it’s all damned unlikely, isn’t it?” Randolph glared around the room. “We were all in bed at midnight. I daresay the married people may vouch for one another, but the rest of us cannot prove we were in bed when my father was murdered.”

“Randolph!” Peter Albright said sharply.

“Well, Grey has a point! The police will ask such questions.”

“Not of the family, surely,” Miriam said, staring at him.

Such innocence, thought Constance pityingly.

“Oh, probably not,” Randolph said, “but one must be prepared for unpleasantness… More unpleasantness.”

Feeling the need for fresh air, Constance escaped from the breakfast parlor as soon as she could. She was fairly sure those remaining would speculate on the possibility that she had committed the crime, but she could not prevent that. What she did need to do was speak to Grey to decide what to tell the police.

Discovering from Richards that Mr. Grey had gone out, she ran upstairs to fetch her bonnet and change into walking shoes. As she left the house, she wondered seriously about the possibility of someone entering the house and stealing the kitchen knife before coming back the following night to murder Mr. Winsom.

“Constance.”

Annoyingly, it was Randolph calling from behind her, striding rapidly along the path to catch up. She forced down her irritation with a smile, reminding herself of his very recent loss.

“Randolph. How are you?”

“Coping. It helps to be busy. Or to plan to be. Thomas Bolton and I will go through Papa’s business papers this afternoon. It’s my mother who worries me.”

“Give her time,” Constance said gently. “It has only been a few hours.”

He nodded.

“Don’t ask too much of yourself, either,” she added. “As you say, it helps to be busy, but the grief will still be there.”

“You know about grief,” he said, gazing at her. “Because of your husband. Have you buried your own parents?”

“Yes.” It was true, in a manner of speaking. “And several very good friends.”

“I’m sorry.” He drew a deep breath. “I did not mean the party to turn out quite like this.”

“I know.”

“And now we shall have police, detectives from Scotland Yard, down here, raking over our lives and his.”

“I’m afraid that is unavoidable.” She just hoped they did not look too closely into hers and discover her name was false. Which was another reason to speak to Grey.

“The thing is,” Randolph said, “should one tell the truth?”

“I imagine it’s generally best, if one has nothing to hide.”

“Or if a friend has.”

“A friend?” she repeated, looking around for any sign as to the direction Grey had taken.

“You, for example.”

Her stomach jolted. Her eyes flew back to his face, though she managed—she hoped—to keep control of their expression. “I?”

“Where were you just after midnight, Constance?” he asked softly.

“In bed, of course, until I heard all the commotion.”

His lips twisted. “You can’t prove that any more than I can. In fact, I could, if I chose, tell the police that wherever you were, it was not your own bed.”

She widened her eyes. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean I knocked on your door at midnight and you did not answer.”

“Of course I did not,” she said virtuously. “And frankly, Randolph, I am surprised at you, particularly in your mother’s house.”

He flushed but snapped back, “Well, I was pretty surprised too when I opened the door to discover you weren’t there! Where were you?”

She leaned her head to one side, regarding him. It annoyed her unduly to be discovered in a lie, and as usual, she attacked. “Is this where you accuse me outright of immoral behavior? Or of murdering your poor father?”

“No,” he said. “It’s really where we agree to tell the police we were with each other. The story will go no further, I am sure, and it means I can protect you.”

She almost laughed, though the disappointment was surprisingly deep. “You mean you can make sure I protect you .”

He flushed. “You misunderstand me.”

“No, I don’t. And my advice stands. Tell the truth, Randolph. I will.”

And she walked off toward the wood, raising one hand in clear dismissal, just in case he tried to follow her. She was striding along so furiously that she did not see the man seated on the tree branch among the foliage until he dropped right in front of her, landing lightly on his feet like a cat.

She stopped dead, glaring at Solomon Grey. He looked as elegant as ever in his well-cut clothes, even with bits of leaf clinging to his coat.

“Who has ruffled your feathers?” he inquired.

“You know perfectly well it was Randolph Winsom. I’m sure you had an excellent view of our encounter from up there.” She brushed past him and strode on.

“Lovers’ tiffs do not interest me,” he said, falling into step with her.

“If you imagine that boy is my lover, you are quite laughably wide of the mark.”

She expected him to ask, but he remained silent so long, merely ambling along beside her, that she turned on him. “Well, you are! Do you know he had the nerve to blackmail me into giving him an alibi? Of course, he pretended it was for my protection, but he had already told me he knew I wasn’t in my room just after midnight. So I was to sacrifice my reputation in order to protect him!”

“Interesting,” was all Grey said.

For no reason, that hurt her. She curled her lip. “I am well aware of my true reputation, but he is not. I suppose you think whores deserve to be treated like that.”

He turned his head, focusing on her face. “No, I don’t. I just don’t see why you are so angry. He is young and frightened and might just have killed his father. You are older and wiser and you already know that when it comes down to it, you have me to prove your alibi.”

“After midnight,” she blurted. “Not before. You could have done it before you entered the library.”

“So could you. Though I must point out that we probably saw the killer pass from the library window.”

“I only have your word for that. I didn’t see anyone. You could have made it up to get me out of the library and keep me busy while you carried on searching for whatever it was you sought there in the first place.”

“I could,” he agreed. “But I am not always quite that devious. I had no reason to kill him, you know. I wanted information only he could give me. And he didn’t have time in the end.”

“What sort of information?”

In silence, he walked three paces. Four. “He might have seen my brother when he was in Jamaica.”

Whatever she had expected, it was not that. “Winsom left Jamaica more than twenty years ago.”

“So did my brother. Maybe. Certainly, I have not seen him since.”

Twenty years ago, he could not have been more than ten. How old was his brother? He gave her no time to ask.

He said quickly, “Has it struck you that as the outsiders at Greenforth, you or I might well be the preferred suspects?”

“Yes,” she admitted. “To say nothing of my false pretenses. And your prying into drawers.”

He did not look offended by the accusation. In fact, he might not have been listening. “I have been thinking about your friends, the Tizsas.”

Dragan Tizsa, physician, refugee, and one-time revolutionary, had somehow married Lady Grizelda Niven, a daughter of the Duke of Kelburn. They were an eccentric couple, devoted to art, music, social justice, and mysteries—and to each other, which was rather endearing. Constance had met them the same night she met Solomon, and they had solved the mystery surrounding her old friend Elizabeth…

“We could use their help,” she admitted. “But we can hardly invite them into someone else’s house of mourning.”

“No. But…we could try to solve this murder ourselves. If only we trusted each other.”

“We don’t.”

“True.” He walked on, then glanced back at her. “Do you want to try anyway?”

She didn’t even think about it. “Yes.” She drew a deep breath. “I hadn’t learned what I wished to, either. I thought…”

“You thought what?”

She glared at him, daring him to laugh at her. “That Walter Winsom might be my father.”

*

It seemed she could always snatch Solomon’s breath. He wasn’t surprised that she had agreed so easily to his suggestion of working together to discover the truth—they needed each other’s support in this house. But in all his speculations as to the reasons for her presence here, he had never even thought of anything so…sad.

The woman ran a bawdy house, albeit a very discreet and expensive one. He knew that beneath the beauty she used as a marketable weapon, she was hard as nails. She had to be. But she looked after her women. She had even looked after Elizabeth and Lady Griz. He allowed her curiosity and compassion. But this… This admission, if true, betrayed a yearning to belong to someone, to have roots and a family, a loneliness and vulnerability quite at odds with her outward character. Loneliness was something he understood only too well.

He too could be guilty of prejudice.

In the dappled sunlight of the woods, she glared up at him, daring him to laugh. Sympathy would be just as unwelcome. And for that reason, he believed her.

“Was he?” he asked, carefully indifferent.

“My father? Who knows? As a youth, he certainly raked around the stews of London. A friend who had dealings with Randolph told me she knew other whores who had known his father in the past. Also, that Walter had fathered an illegitimate girl, more than twenty-five years ago. That could have been me.”

Her voice was too deliberately light, disparaging her own origins as well as Walter’s character.

“Did you want him to be your father?” he asked.

She shrugged. “I don’t even know if I liked him. I thought Randolph was quite sweet. I thought I’d quite like him as a brother.”

“Only you don’t.”

“No. But you see why I laughed when you suggested a quite different relationship.”

He inclined his head. “Randolph himself is clearly aware of no connection. How badly does he want to marry you?”

She opened her mouth to deny any serious intent on his part, and then closed it again. “You think he wanted me so badly he would kill his father for refusing to allow it?”

“I don’t suppose he’s the first man to commit murder for you.”

She fluttered her eyelashes. “Why, Mr. Grey, you say the sweetest things.”

“It was not a compliment.”

“I shall still choose to regard it as such.”

“Have you always had that accent?”

“Wot, vis old fing? Bless yer, guv, no. I ’ad to buy the pebbles for me mouf special like.”

His lips twitched.

“Would that accent make you feel better?” she asked politely.

“It was never about the accent. One day, I would like to hear your life story.”

“No, you wouldn’t.” She glanced up at him. “I might like to hear yours, though.”

“Imagine how the long winter nights would fly by.”

“Well, hopefully, we’ll have solved the crime by then and not be in prison awaiting execution. Who do you think did it? Apart from me.”

“At the moment, I suspect everyone has a motive—except the servants. I haven’t considered them at all yet. I do have one clue.” He fished in his pocket and brought out the embroidered handkerchief. “I found this in Winsom’s left hand last night.”

Constance took it. “I don’t recognize it. It’s probably his wi—” She broke off, her gaze on the embroidered initials. A.B. “Alice Bolton…”

She halted and raised her gaze to his. “Then they were having an affair.”

“Perhaps.” He shrugged. “And perhaps not. He could have found it somewhere in the garden.”

“He could. But it’s odd he should have been wandering in the garden, holding on to it. Unless he’d only just come across it, surely he’d have put it in his pocket? No, I think there’s something between them. But does it help us?”

“It might. At the moment, it’s just another mystery. What do you think about the servants, and Mrs. Corben’s missing knife?”

She shook her head. “Servants have little motive to attack the hand that feeds them. The Winsoms are not cruel to their staff. Let’s leave them until later. What of Randolph? He is Walter’s heir and stands to inherit what I gather is a substantial fortune.”

“Much of it tied up in business,” Solomon said, “largely in the bank with Bolton. I doubt Randolph has taken the trouble to understand the workings of that. Still, he will have a much larger allowance to play with—or will do when he is of age.”

She sighed. “Then you discount his love for me as a motive? I am crushed.”

“No, it just adds to the general greed. Then there is the grieving widow.”

“Seriously?”

Solomon raised his eyebrows. “She is angry with him about something. I may be self-obsessed, but I got the impression she was trying to rile her husband by inviting me.”

“By flirting with you,” she corrected him.

Annoyingly, he felt heat rise into his face. He hoped she could not see it. “In a very sedate way, perhaps. But it would surely have the same effect.”

“No, flirting is better, and she definitely was. Perhaps she had only just discovered Walter was unfaithful with her friend Alice Bolton.”

“But was he?” Solomon asked.

Constance considered. “It always struck me that he was a little friendlier than he should be with Alice. They exchange a lot of looks and are quite often discovered in private conversation. But then, the Boltons and the Winsoms are old friends—the husbands are business partners.”

“An affair could certainly be motive for Bolton or Alice or Deborah Winsom herself to kill him.” If it were true and if they had been found out. Or if he had ended the affair. Solomon frowned. “Could things really be so fraught amongst the two couples? Don’t they appear too…”

“Smug?” Constance suggested.

“I was going to say contented , but perhaps there are elements of smugness. If Alice and Deborah are rivals in love, I’ve seen no signs of hostility between them.” In fact, he had seen them through her bedroom door, clinging together. “Have you?”

“Not really, but then, I never observed them before I came here, so I don’t really know them or how they were before. The four of them must be very close. On the other hand, Bolton seems to me to be very much the junior partner, overshadowed by Winsom, at least in personality.”

“And in business,” said Solomon, recalling that brief flash of something very like malevolence he had imagined in Bolton’s eyes as they rested on his old friend. “Perhaps Bolton had simply had enough of being second fiddle. I certainly caught an expression that was neither friendship nor admiration.”

“Perhaps,” Constance said, clearly unconvinced. “But would you kill a man simply for outshining you?”

“I wouldn’t, no. But perhaps I should dig a little deeper. If Bolton is the brains behind their success and Winsom took all the credit—along, perhaps, with the bulk of the money and Bolton’s wife…”

Constance nodded. “It would help to know such things. But Randolph is right about one point—the Boltons share a bed. There are no dressing rooms in the guest bedchambers. They would know, surely, if one of them got up, committed murder, and came back to bed?”

“Not necessarily. And even if they did, would they say? A married couple tends to rise or fall together. Even if they’re unhappy, they would cover for each other.”

Constance waved her hand dismissively. “Then to the devil with them. Who else might have done it?”

“Randolph. To get his hands on the money or on you.”

“Would he, though? He’s not yet twenty-one. Would he not have a trustee or someone acting for him? To say nothing of Bolton.”

“Yes,” Solomon allowed. “But he would certainly have more clout, more access to money, and he could probably get around everyone else but his father where you are concerned.”

“I really don’t think he is so desperate for me that he would murder his father! He just tried to blackmail me.”

Solomon stopped suddenly. “If he planned the murder, perhaps you were only invited to supply his alibi.”

Constance regarded him with dislike. “Now that really is insulting. Although it might well be true. If the knife were taken from the kitchen in advance, then the murder was surely planned. And we know Randolph was up and wandering at the time it happened.”

“Had he ever come to your room before last night?”

“Mr. Grey,” she drawled. “What a question to ask a lady.” She sighed. “Which, of course, I am not. On the other hand, I’ve just told you I suspected he was my brother!”

“I didn’t ask if you let him in,” Solomon said mildly, “only if he knocked at your door.”

“No, he treated me with a great deal of respect,” she admitted. “It was a bit of a balancing act, if you want the truth, but I very much had the upper hand in our relationship.”

She was used to manipulating men. For her own possibly ridiculous reasons, she had decided to come here and callously picked on young Randolph as her means. Solomon could almost see the situation in his mind’s eye—Constance, all womanly temptation, twisting the boy around her little finger, while maintaining all the proprieties of a tolerant if indulgent sister, a respectable widow, a few years older and wiser than the infatuated young man.

He didn’t like the images. The very idea was distasteful. But then, she had probably learned very early in life to be all things to all men. He didn’t like that notion either. It involved too much pity as well as disdain. And God knew he had never been immune to her undeniable charms.

For an instant he remembered her beneath the hazily flaring torchlight in a foggy back alley, incongruously well dressed and the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. Unaware of him, she had been watching other people. She had not seen the man falling backward off the roof directly above her.

Instinct had propelled Solomon into her, pushing her to safety, holding her upright. No woman ever had felt so wonderful in his arms, even in that tiny moment that had nothing to do with lust. She had stared up at him, startled, confused, only just absorbing the knowledge of her narrow escape. And yet, just for a moment, she had seemed frightened. Not of death but of him.

Was it not that odd vulnerability as much as her beauty that ensured he remembered her? Whatever, the attraction was strong and unique. But he would never allow her the upper hand.

“Davidson,” he said abruptly, dispelling her image from his mind. “Why is he here? Who invited him?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “He has done business with Winsom and Bolton, but I don’t know what. He is very attentive to young Ellen.”

Solomon kicked broodingly at a couple of dead sticks on the path. “What does a thirty-year-old, self-made man of the world see in a sheltered schoolgirl?”

“Money,” Constance said cynically. “And it does no harm to his business to be the son-in-law of Walter Winsom.”

“Did her parents approve of such a courtship?”

“I’m not sure they noticed,” Constance replied. “Which was why she spoke to me.”

He was turning back toward the house, but at that, he glanced at her. “What did you tell her?”

“To take her time, spread her wings, and keep her options open. And that she is a route to money and influence for unscrupulous men. I assure you I am quite the champion of moral rectitude and sensible advice.”

All things to all people… And she imagined Ellen might be her little sister. “Does it give him a motive?” Solomon wondered. “Or her, come to that. Can you see her murdering her father?”

“Not without a much better reason than Ivor Davidson. Davidson wouldn’t risk it either—except in a temper, perhaps.”

“Like Randolph? He has a temper, has he not?”

“Yes,” Constance allowed. Her voice was flat, deliberately unconcerned. Even she, mercenary and independent, had wished for a family, and not just for material gain. “I don’t suppose the vicar has, though.”

“Albright? Why not? Because he is a man of God?”

“Please,” Constance said. “I cannot tell you the number of so-called godly men who pass through my establishment. I had to ban one of them for reasons that would make you blush. I would not tar Peter Albright with that particular brush, but he is an ambitious career churchman. I cannot think murder in his family would improve his chances of preferment.”

She had a point. “And Miriam?” he asked, for the sake of completeness.

Again, she surprised him. “Miriam is an interesting character. Quiet, almost submissive, she is clearly proud of her husband and as obedient to him as she was to her parents. Yet she took charge last night, looked after her mother—as far as she could—and her siblings.”

“Then she is stronger than she appears?” Solomon said with new interest.

“I think she must be. She does not love her husband.”

He blinked. “Then her marriage was to please her parents? Does that not rather imply weakness, since she would not stand up to them?”

“I didn’t say she did not want the marriage,” Constance pointed out. “But it takes a certain kind of strength to submit to a man one does not love.”

“I suppose you would know,” he replied.

There was the smallest of pauses before she said, “Yes, it is something of a specialty in my profession.”

He looked at her quickly. She appeared unconcerned, gazing straight ahead of her, and yet something in her had changed. Was she angry? Hurt? He could not tell.

She turned her head to meet his gaze. “Never imagine I am submissive, Mr. Grey. Our partnership would come to grief.”

He widened his eyes in amusement. “Are you warning me off?”

“Oh, I don’t think I have any need of that with you,” she said affably. “I am just telling you in a general kind of way. Women, like men, are generally more than they seem. Are we any further forward in discovering our murderer?”

“No.” It was an effort to adjust his mind away from her once more. “Though I thank you for clarifying a few matters for me. We need to ask some questions. And look again, perhaps, at the scene of the crime.”

The shadow of a frown flickered across her brow, as though she were annoyed with herself for not thinking of it herself. He wondered what crimes she had been involved in before this, whether as victim or perpetrator.

She certainly walked back toward the garden at breakneck speed, and in very few minutes they stood by the swing, close to where they had found the body. Solomon had already been here this morning, before breakfast, but he hoped she would notice something he had missed. He kept his gaze on her face, not on the churned-up lawn.

She swallowed audibly. “Do you think he was running away when he was stabbed?”

“Impossible to tell. The grass is certainly depressed and churned up in places, but not enough, I would think, to show any kind of struggle.”

To his surprise, she bent down and touched the patch of mud in front of her, then glanced back toward the house. “The quickest way back to the house is not by the paths but through that flowerbed.” She rose unaided and walked over to it. The plants had been trampled, and the earth clearly walked on. “Too many feet to see any in particular.”

“They brought the body back into the house this way. And I daresay the constables poked around here too. If the murderer left his footprint, it’s well obliterated.”

“Mr. Winsom’s, too,” she said, “though I can’t imagine his barging through flowerbeds and trampling the plants. Was he sitting on the swing, and the murderer waited for him to move before he attacked?”

“Where would he hide? The moonlight was bright enough.”

“Perhaps he didn’t need to hide,” Constance said slowly. “Perhaps Winsom was waiting for someone. He would not fear his own guests.”

“True. We already know it was a planned crime, so the murderer is unlikely to have hidden here on the off chance of Winsom passing this way.”

“He could have followed him from the house… Only, wouldn’t Winsom have heard him? Turned to face him?”

“It must have been sudden,” Solomon said. “I think he was with someone he trusted. Perhaps they were walking together, and the killer fell back just a little and attacked.”

“There wasn’t much blood,” Constance said. “He died quickly. By luck or design, the knife must have gone straight though his heart. Then the killer bolted back to the house through this flowerbed?” She shivered and looked up at Grey, sudden anguish in her face. “Perhaps he even heard us coming. A minute or two earlier and we might have saved him.”