Jasper pushed past Red who was growling with his ears back and neck hairs up. He barely recognized Lord Bantham. The man was half dressed and his eyes bulged in his head. Jasper arrested his arm. “You know who killed your wife?”
“Yes. Our maid. Rose.”
“Rose?” Jasper echoed. He had just been thinking about her, her declaration to him that she had seen someone leave the house at night. Had she spoken about it, attracting Bantham’s attention? Was he now accusing her to go scot-free himself, or protect his wife?
“Why would Rose murder the former Lady Bantham? She never even knew her, didn’t serve her.”
“Her sister did.” Lord Bantham looked grim. “I didn’t know when I hired her. I would never have taken her into our home if I had. But she has a different last name and… She was married, you know, to an Irish sailor. Went into service after he was lost at sea. At least that is what she told me. But you never know with servants. To think she lived under my roof all that time plotting something.” He pointed at Jasper. “I want her found. Pronto.”
Jasper gestured at him to slow down. “I don’t follow. Rose came to work for you but she lied about her past?”
“Her maiden name is Miller. She’s Agnes’s sister.”
Jasper’s head spun. He had just been considering the stark possibility that Agnes Miller had died in the car three years ago, in Lady Bantham’s stead. That her death had been a conscious setup to enable Lady Bantham to escape and start a new life. Now Lady Bantham was dead and the victim’s sister had been around?
“My wife wanted Rose to curl her hair, but she was nowhere to be found. Penelope looked in her room and there was a psalter on the table, open as if Rose had been reading it. Penelope picked it up and then it opened in the front and the name was there. Agnes Miller. Of course, my wife knows about the missing jewels and… To think we have been employing that little thief’s sister… I want her found!”
Jasper rubbed his forehead. “When was Rose last seen?”
“Just as my wife had seen the name and realized what it meant, she heard a sound at the door and looked up. Rose stood in the doorway. She saw the psalter in Penelope’s hand and realized the game was up. She turned around and fled. She was too fast for Penelope to overtake.”
“So, Rose is on the run in Venice?” Jasper asked. “Does she have any money?”
“I think not. She ran out without taking anything. You must find her.”
“I will do everything I can.” Most of all, because I want to talk to her. She can provide vital information as to her sister and why she came to work for the Banthams.
At the same time Jasper realized something. He might not be the only one understanding the importance of Rose O’Neill for this case. If an interested party got to her, before he did, there might be another woman lying dead in the streets of Venice.
Chapter Seventeen
Jasper stared at what he called his strategic plan. He didn’t want to call it a wild goose chase. He had put himself in the position of a girl who was suddenly a fugitive, alone and afraid. Without funds, friends or means to ask for help as she spoke no Italian. Where would Rose go? How would she hide?
In a public place that was always open, welcoming and where no one would harbour suspicion if someone lingered.
A church.
He had used Vernassi’s map of Venice to find all churches within a reasonable walking distance of the house where the Banthams were staying. Rose would not be able to hire a gondola as she had no money. He also bet on her being tired and eager to hide sooner than later.
Armed with a list of churches, he had gathered Vernassi’s staff, and via the butler, who spoke good English, had instructed them to go and find the churches and look for a girl hiding there. They were to tell her that Jasper wanted to speak with her, he would protect her and then to send him word to let him know in which church she was hiding. He had told them it was very important police business and whoever found her and helped him protect her would receive a handsome reward. He guessed that Vernassi would be livid when he came back home from the opera, but that was inevitable and he would make it up to him later.
“Signor Jasper!” One of Vernassi’s footman, a red-faced individual of about forty with a curly moustache, ran after him and waved him along. He explained something in rapid Italian of which Jasper could only make out that he had found something and it was at the church of San Giovanni Battista. “Bene, bene,” Jasper panted as he ran after the man who sped along the street as if his feet didn’t touch the ground.
* * *
The church had a tall portal of marble pillars in immaculate white. Coming from the darkness outside, Jasper narrowed his eyes against the light shining down the aisle from the ornate altar piece with its golden embellishments and biblical scenes painted in vivid azure, vermillion and emerald. Saints looked down from every wall, benign or forbidding, and the floor beneath his feet glimmered with golden lettering. A few elderly women sat in the first pews, their heads bent in prayer.
The footman gestured to the left and Jasper had to come and stand beside him before he could see what he was pointing at. A girl knelt in the pew, far away from the aisle, in the shadows of a pillar with a female saint beside it, lifting a blessing hand over her.
Jasper slipped into the pew and sat down beside her. “Rose.” His whisper seemed loud in the solemn silence but the elderly women in front didn’t stir.
“I didn’t do anything wrong. Honestly. I didn’t steal. I just wanted to know the truth.”
“About Agnes?” he asked.
She nodded. Tears formed in her eyes. “She didn’t steal, either. She couldn’t have. She wasn’t like that.” She fell silent and added then, her voice strangled with emotion. “Although she did change. That household changed her.”
Jasper realized they couldn’t speak in depth here, in this sacred place, where it was supposed to be silent and he touched her arm. “Come with me. I will find a place for you where they cannot find you.”
She looked at him, her blue eyes wide and luminous. “Do you believe me?”
He didn’t know what she wanted him to believe or what grounds he had to say yes, but he wanted her to trust him and come with him. “You need not go back to the Banthams. I’ll keep you safe until I know the truth.”
She hesitated, looking him over. Then she nodded. “I prayed before you came. That the Lord would send me someone to look after me. Now you have come. I’ll go with you.” She crossed herself and rose to her feet.
The footman was waiting for them in the back of the church, his head bent in reverence for his solemn surroundings.
Outside, Jasper said he could go and find the others and tell them the search was over. “But don’t tell anyone where she was found. Only then I will reward you.”
The ginger moustache twirled at the mention of a reward, and he nodded eagerly and bounded off.
Jasper stood thinking. Luigi had told him where he lived and for the moment it seemed safest to bring the girl to him and then ask him to bring her to a friend. The harder it would be to follow her trail, the safer she would be. For now.
He smiled at her. “We do need to walk a bit. Come with me.”
* * *
Rose glanced around the simple room where the gondolier had brought them. Jasper had explained to him that she needed a safe place for a while, as she was a witness in the murder case. Her stomach had tightened. A witness, as if she had seen the killing.
“I’ll go and see if Nonna has something to eat,” the gondolier said. He winked at her. Her cheeks heated.
“I think he likes you,” Jasper observed. “He took you to his grandmother’s house, into the heart of his family.”
She tilted her chin up. “I can fend for myself.” Realizing how odd it sounded as he had just rescued her from the church where she had been hiding in fear, she added, “I’ve done well for myself since my husband died.”
“You’ve been married?”
She wonde
red briefly if Lord Bantham hadn’t told him. Surely, he would have mentioned how her last name had fooled him, never making the connection with Agnes? Was Jasper testing her? “Yes, to an Irish sailor. For all I know I’m still married. He never came back. He’s not dead. Not officially.” She folded her hands. “There’s not a lot I can do about it, either. Just wait. It seemed like bad luck coming all together. First Agnes gone, vanished into thin air, then my husband.”
She looked Jasper in the eye. “I can’t go and find him. Not across the sea. But I thought I could find out about Agnes. Something wasn’t right there. In that house. She wrote to me about it.”
“Do you still have her letters? Are they in your luggage at Lord Bantham’s address? If so, I must go and get them at once. He might destroy them if he finds them among your things.”
“Why would he look for them?”
Jasper gestured. “It was a shock to him to find you are Agnes’s sister. He must realize you came to them to discover something. He might fear what it can be.”
Rose bit her lip. “I don’t have the letters any more. I burned them.”
“What? Why?”
“Agnes asked me to. In every letter she wrote, burn this as soon as you’ve read it because if it ever comes to light, they might harm me.” Tears pushed behind her eyes. “I told her to leave but she wouldn’t. The pay was good, she said.”
“And she had a lover there. She was with child when…” Jasper fell silent.
Rose lifted her head and looked at him. “You need not swallow it down for my sake, sir. I have thought about it long and hard and I have decided it can’t be any other way. Agnes is dead. She died in that car. In Lady Bantham’s stead. She would never have taken those jewels and sold them. Not even if she could because she was in London all alone. She would have returned them to his lordship. No, if the jewels were gone and she was, she had to be dead. She would never let that accusation hang over her if she was somewhere alive and well. Couldn’t have.” She swallowed. “I already knew it in my heart, before Lady Bantham returned. And when she did…”
She closed her eyes, thinking of the horrible moment when Bantham had carried in his wife, supporting her as if she had fainted, and she had asked whether the mistress was all right and he had barked at her to bring water and brandy. She had heard him shout for the other servants to come and help as well. And he had paced the room growling and banging into things. Lady Bantham had asked him how it could be and whether it meant their marriage was still valid and he had screamed at her that he didn’t care. ‘Olivia is alive, that is all that matters.’
Olivia. Lady Bantham, alive.
Rose widened her eyes and looked at Jasper. “I knew for sure then that it had been the other way around. Everyone thought Lady Bantham was dead and my sister had run away, but it was the other way around. Lady Bantham had run away and Agnes was… is dead.” She knotted her fingers. “I had told myself before, saying Agnes would never steal, never. But still to know Lady Bantham was alive meant…”
“To know for certain, without a spark of doubt, it was true. A spark of hope too,” he said slowly. “You wanted your sister to come back to you.”
“I have no one else in the world. My parents are dead, my husband is lost at sea. What could I hope for but Agnes being alive somehow. It was a silly hope, a slight one at that. But still. It is all gone now.”
“You must have been angry when you heard them discussing what happened at the party, when you realized what it meant for Agnes.”
“I was, but I didn’t show it to them. I just watched from the window to see who would leave at night. I wanted to know if his lordship would go to her.”
“To the former Lady Bantham?”
“Yes. He acted like he was all angry at her and… I couldn’t imagine he wouldn’t want to see her and ask her why she had done it. I also thought he might… plead with her to go away again and save his marriage.”
“Do you think he and the second Lady Bantham are happy?”
“I don’t know if rich people are happy at all. They don’t take care of their own homes, they let others clean and cook, they don’t do things together. Agnes often wrote to me in her letters that Lord Bantham and his first wife argued every night. That she could hear their raised voices.”
“What did they argue about?”
“Her buying too many dresses and being away so much. And having friends. Not just normal friends, but male friends.” Rose glanced at him. “Can I just tell you about that?”
Jasper smiled. “I’ve worked for the police a long time. I’ve heard so much I’m not easily shocked any more.”
“Agnes wrote to me that Lady Bantham had many male friends who smoked and ruined the curtains in the house. That they were cruel to the horses. That they had struck at a stable lad with a whip just because he wanted them not to ride the horses so hard.”
“Did she see that with her own eyes?”
“She was friendly with the steward.” Rose plucked at her cuff. “I think he was the real reason she wanted to stay there. Not the pay. She cared for him.”
“And the baby she was expecting when she died in the car, if she died in the car, was his?”
“She never wrote about that. Just that she was in a difficult situation and Lady Bantham had offered to help her. That it was very unexpected. She was so nice about it, as Agnes had been afraid she would have to leave once it became known.” Rose looked at Jasper. “I had no idea what she meant, but later when I heard about the woman in the car having been with child, I wondered…”
Jasper nodded with a grim expression. “Agnes’s situation may have prompted the plan in her head.”
Rose clenched her jaw. “She was a wicked woman.”
“What else did Agnes write? How was Lady Bantham going to help her?”
“I don’t know. It was her last letter before she vanished. I’ve even thought for just a fleeting moment Lady Bantham had changed her mind and then in despair Agnes did take the jewels. Just because she had to. I’m sorry I doubted her. I really am.” Rose pushed her hands against her face to keep herself from crying.
Jasper said, “Don’t blame yourself. You had no idea what was happening. Tell me more about her letters before the last one. Is it possible that this man she was in love with, the father of her baby, knows anything about her? Can we contact him?”
Rose shook her head. “After Agnes vanished and was accused of stealing, I went to see him. I told him I was her sister and I wanted to clear her name. That he had to tell me all he knew. But he told me he knew nothing and he had never been close with her. That if she had written to me about him liking her she had just imagined that. He was very rude and even turned me out of his cottage. I went away thinking I would never know the truth. My husband told me to leave it be and I did until he got lost at sea. Then no one could tell me any more that I shouldn’t look into it. Lady Bantham, the new one I mean, was looking for a maid and I applied. Under my married name. With a false reference. That was bad, I know, but I just did it for my sister.”
Jasper studied her intently. She didn’t know whether he believed her or not.
He asked, “Have you ever made a mistake, let it slip to anyone that you knew the household from your sister’s letters to you? Did you accidentally betray that you had some knowledge you couldn’t have?”
“Oh no, sir. I was quiet as a mouse. I made sure no one could discover it.”
“Still you have your sister’s psalter with you. With her name in it.”
Rose shrugged. “I didn’t think her ladyship would go through my things and find that old psalter.”
“She said it was open on the table in your room.”
“Oh no, sir, that can’t be. It’s in the back of my things, wrapped up in a bundle. Not easy to find.”
Jasper looked puzzled. “But you saw her with it, didn’t you? You came to your room and saw her holding the psalter in her hands. You fled because you realized you were caught out.”
Rose shook her head. “I fled because she began to shout at me that I was a killer and she would tell the police about Agnes and have me locked up and beheaded.” She wrapped her arms around her shoulders. “That’s what she said, that they still have the guillotine over here.”
* * *
Jasper studied the girl. Her answers seemed to come in a steady flow. Her emotions seemed appropriate for her position. Still something wasn’t quite right. Her story didn’t match what he had heard from Bantham. He had said the psalter had been open on the table in her room, not hidden in the back of a closet, among her things.
Was Rose lying? If so, what for?
Everyone considered Agnes a little saint, a voice in the back of his head whispered, and she turned out to know a lot about the household and write it all to her sister. An affair with the steward… real or imagined?
The baby had in any case not been imagined.
He frowned. Was Rose also different from how she appeared to him right now? Thinking she needed his help and could act like she was the victim of events?
Luigi came in with a plate and gave it to Rose. “The best torta di lamponi con crema in the whole world,” he declared, sticking out his chest. “Nonna makes it based on a secret recipe.”
Rose rolled her eyes at his exaggeration, but she had to laugh. She pushed her fork deep into the slice of torta, cutting through the fresh raspberries and rich cream on top into the cake beneath. Having put the large bite into her mouth, she chewed and mumbled, “Delicious. So sweet.”
Jasper smiled at her and drew Luigi aside. He lowered his voice so the girl couldn’t overhear. “I want you to move her away from here again. For the safety of your grandmother and for Rose’s. I want her to be untraceable from the rich people who are after her. That is most important, you understand?”
Under the Guise of Death Page 14